Found in Transit
by zundaerazylym
Summary: A Post-Return story, wherein the great detective and the good doctor find themselves in the middle of an international conflict as clandestine alliances of nations and parties jockey for power under the guise of civil war. Survival will depend on John and Sherlock learning to trust, understand, and forgive each other. I am pants at blurbs; the better summary is inside. M to be safe
1. Chapter 1

Found in Transit

This is a Post-Return adventure with some AU elements. Some rather heavy topics are discussed and dissected, so please heed warnings at the starts of chapters if a subject might trigger you! This will be an eventual John/Sherlock story. There will be scattered spoilers for Series One and Two, particularly for The Reichenbach Fall.

To summarise... four months after Sherlock returns to Baker Street, John still hasn't moved back to the flat. Sherlock makes every effort to get him to return, but before he can get John to explain what the bloody problem is, the two find themselves chasing and being chased by shadowy international coalitions aiming to change the face of war the world over. No chase is ever simple, however, and the duo will have to learn to communicate, trust, and understand each other to survive, to overcome their pasts, and to alert the world to the growing crisis going undetected beneath the unrest in the Middle East.

* * *

_Bored. SH_

John glared at his phone's screen, cursing under his breath at the persistent, petulant detective. '_Why bother me with this?' _he responded, not at all amused. It was Wednesday, it was mid-shift at the surgery, his best friend had faked his own death and didn't seem to understand why John was so upset about it when he showed up three years later, Sarah wasn't speaking to him after last week's disaster of a date, he hadn't slept well for the past few nights, and an alarmingly large number of patients were coming in with the most absurd, most annoying, most _unbelievably moronic _problems.

When one spent a night bent over the loo with norovirus, liquids obviously needed to be restored somehow, even if it led to another bout of vomiting. If one's ankle produced a loud crunching sound when a stiletto heel gave out, the pain alone should have precluded hastily gluing the heel back on to the shoe and going back on the dance floor. Furthermore, one should absolutely not insert plastic tubing into one's nose in an effort to alleviate sinus pressure. It was safe to say that John was beginning to understand and even sympathize with Sherlock's not-so-fond feelings for the rest of humanity.

The secretary opened the door and handed John a clipboard with a chart on it just as John was getting up to fetch yet another cup of coffee. "Got a Ms. Dunhill for you, Dr. Watson, says she's feeling a bit under the weather."

"Thank you, Millie. Er... could you bring me another cuppa while you fetch Ms. Dunhill?" He gave his best 'please help me' moue; the secretary merely gave a benevolent smile and told him she'd be back in two. John flipped through the incoming patient's chart, eyes scanning but not seeing or comprehending. He was simply too exhausted to bother; if she wasn't in Accidents and Emergencies and didn't feel half-dead, he could gather what information he needed from the patient herself. He looked up from the papers just as the secretary returned with the patient and a (blessed, glorious) steaming mug of coffee.

The girl, a tiny brunette who couldn't have been older than twenty, perched on the examination table and watched the secretary leave the room. As soon as the door shut, she took a deep breath before speaking. "So I have a physical today, Doctor, but I've also got a question to ask first and I'm really really sorry it's so awkward but I really gotta ask, it's serious!" The words tumbled out of her mouth so quickly that John had to take a moment to process what she had said.

He tried his best to seem alert but sympathetic. "Yes? It's all right, go ahead." His phone chose that moment to buzz twice; John pulled the desk drawer open and dropped the phone into it in one smooth motion.

The girl looked from John to the drawer to John again, her brown eyes questioning. He gave a long-suffering roll of his eyes, which seemed to reassure the girl; she took another deep breath. "Okay. So me and my boyfriend, we had a bit of a spat a few months ago, and he ran off with some hussy, you see, but she was a bitch and he came back the other week, and we're back together now, but when we were, um... well, he had these... spots on his you know what, but I didn't think it was a problem until I found one down... well, you know, and... is it bad if it burns?"

John took a long sip of his coffee. Today was going to be a very, very long day.

It wasn't until after his shift ended that John finally found time to see what on earth Sherlock was whinging about. He could only roll his eyes when he saw fourteen messages waiting; either something had happened or Sherlock had attained a new level of impossible. John sincerely hoped for the former. He wasn't sure if he could handle any more Holmes petulance than he was already coping with.

_ I'm bothering you because it's something to do. SH 12:47_

_ Entertain me. SH 12:47_

_ Still bored. SH 12:55_

_ Why aren't you entertaining me? I asked for entertainment. SH 13:04_

_ Don't respond then, I'll just be bored by myself. SH 13:30_

_ Honestly, John, don't be so dull. Stop hiding your gun, as well. The wall is taunting me; it must be put in its place. SH 14:01_

_ Mrs. Hudson has discovered YouTube. Please shoot me. SH 14:23_

_ I am regaled with tales of cats in boxes. Dear God help me John. SH 14:31_

_ Cats in jars. Cats falling into bins. Cats going up screen doors. Why are there so many inane, idiotic cat owners? I am losing hope in humanity. SH 15:12_

_ She's gone. Perhaps there is a God. SH 15:46_

_ John, I think I may have a problem. SH 16:30_

_ An interesting, serious problem. Going to DI Lestrade with client. SH 16:38_

_ Need you back at flat. Bad problem. Very bad. SH 16:45_

_ Please leave work immediately and come here, John. Hurry. Please. SH 16:59_

At first, John was chuckling—served Sherlock right to have to sit through Mrs. Hudson's tales of cats. The eleventh message had John wondering if perhaps one of Sherlock's experiments had gone catastrophically wrong, but by the time he read the last one, he was already out the surgery door and hailing a taxi. One 'please' was alarming enough. Two made John's chest tighten and his blood run cold in dread. "Speedy's on Baker Street, fast as you can," he told the driver, burying his head in his hands. Some part of him honestly hoped that this was Sherlock trying a new tack to manipulate him into some sort of experiment, because if anything happened to Sherlock again... John shook his head. It was just one crisis after another between work and Sherlock. Forget about rest or sanity for poor John Watson.

Frankly, being harassed by a bored and then frantic consulting detective was vastly preferable to mourning said detective, but John could only take so much. Sherlock hardly seemed to notice that the past three years had been the worst of John's life. Hello, yes, I faked my death, didn't tell you sorry, clever me, too bad you couldn't know even though you've proven your trustworthiness a thousand times over, now move back in and let's pretend it never happened, shall we? John kneaded his brow and grimaced into his hand. Nevermind that he had visited Sherlock's (fake) grave at least four times a week. Nevermind that he spent that entire first month crying, eating, and sleeping over his (not) dead best friend. Forget about the fact that his limp returned with a vengeance after the (faked) death. Certainly forget about the dozen or so failed relationships.

Just seeing Sherlock was difficult. It was still so hard to believe that he was honestly alive! John looked at that coat and could only see the way it had billowed as he plummeted to the ground. The red button-holes brought back images of a pool of blood seeping out from beneath dark curls. Hearing his voice brought back memories of three years of _silence_. He shook like a leaf every time he was within sight of that patch of pavement. John hardly needed his therapist to know that this was yet another iteration of PTSD and a deep bout of depression; the night terrors alone were enough to confirm the diagnosis. He would keep facing Sherlock until it finally faded, and then maybe he would return, but... going back and living with someone who barely acknowledged your pain was not something a smart person generally did.

No, it wasn't a smart idea, but John was no Sherlock Holmes. Once the nightmares faded, once the limp vanished, once he felt somewhat human again, he would go back. He had to go back. Life was too quiet without the madman's escapades.

The cab pulled up in front of the familiar red awning of Speedy's; John paid the cabbie hastily and sighed in relief as Mrs. Hudson opened the door for him almost immediately. "Sherlock is upstairs, dear, he's in quite a state," the landlady explained as John struggled out of his coat. Leaping up the steps two at a time, John burst into the flat half-expecting to find Sherlock bruised, burnt, bloodied, or otherwise injured.

Instead, Sherlock was typing furiously into his netbook as he referenced something on John's laptop. "John. Come look at this." He didn't even look up from whatever it was that he was working on as John approached the couch. "A Russian brought this. I took him to Lestrade's to question him—he mentioned a murder—but he was dead halfway through questioning."

John furrowed his brow in alarm. "What? Dead?"

"Yes, John, dead, don't make me repeat myself. He went through a textbook strychnine poisoning progression, but not before he handed me this." Sherlock indicated the flash drive in John's laptop. "From what I can gather, this may be something that Mycroft will need to see."

That really got John's attention. "Mycroft. You're willing to turn a case over to Mycroft?" What on Earth could possibly be so serious that Sherlock would voluntarily turn it over to his older brother?

"Massive git that he is, yes, this is beyond my scope of influence and requires appropriate resources; hence, Mycroft. I kept out of diplomacy and politics for a reason. Far too much trouble to maintain the requisite networks. John, there are bank transactions between several corporations and national research and development departments; I've not even heard of some of the groups mentioned in the statements. Just look at this."

John was reading over Sherlock's shoulder. He could see a few diagrams of a spheroid protein structure, a mention of double-stranded RNA, several mentions of capsids... "Someone just gave you a drive full of virology research? What is it, a bioweapon?" He kept reading, frowning as he began to get lost. This wasn't like any virus he'd ever studied in uni. Granted, he wasn't exactly a virologist, but still... he should at least be able to follow what the passage was talking about. In another window, there were the mentioned bank transactions. Several names were of obvious Middle Eastern or Slavic origins, but he also recognised the name of a major American contractor, a Chinese pharmaceutical corporation, and two or three companies he was pretty sure were related to Western military and financial groups. "What is this?"

"Not natural," Sherlock murmured as he skimmed several pages of text. "It appears to be an engineered retrovirus of some sort, but look at this, John. Look how much of the test cell's DNA was changed after infection. It's enough that it's not recognisable as the same cell's genome." He and John looked quietly at the diagrams showing the gel electrophoresis plates before and after infection. John could almost hear Sherlock's mind working, trying to wrap itself around what they were seeing. "Some change would be expected, but this? Preposterous. Are they simply trying to make people fall apart?"

"Like the Descolada," John suggested, earning a blank look from Sherlock. He sighed. "Fictional alien virus that made people fall apart. It was in a series of books I read in uni." When Sherlock merely lifted one eyebrow, John waved a hand as if to dismiss the reference. "Forget it. But you said the man that brought this was poisoned? What if the people he stole this from come looking for it? Where is Mycroft, anyway?"

"Lebanon," Sherlock said. "Or Greece. Possibly France. Most likely Lebanon. The elections and the Syrian crisis have been causing a great deal of trouble for him, Syria especially. I can't send these documents in an email; the drive is programmed to wipe itself if I try to copy anything from it. We will have to deliver it ourselves. I've already contacted Lestrade and set aside a week for us to make the trip. Mycroft thinks I am merely visiting to assist in finding evidence to sway Russia on the Syria problem. He will send us a rendezvous location somewhere in Lebanon in four days."

John was definitely not keeping up with everything. He carded a hand through his hair and tipped his forehead against the heel of his palm. "Wait. So Mycroft is in Lebanon and we can't just pack the thing into an envelope and send it off that way?" Sherlock gave him a mortified glare. "Right. Item of international importance. Are you sure it's safe to get on an aeroplane with it, then? What if someone comes after us looking for it?"

Sherlock closed the laptops. "I expect them to. They undoubtedly know that their turncoat escaped with the drive, and I suspect they will trace him to this place within two days. We have to leave, posthaste."

It only took one look at Sherlock's grim but energised face for John to realise that the detective was serious about leaving immediately. Frustration flared in his chest like a dull flame as John stood back to return his friend's glasz stare. "You're serious about this. You want me to just pick up and leave for a week with essentially no warning?"

Sherlock seemed to pick up on John's frustration, but he gave no sign of being affected by it in any way. "Yes. Problem?"

A frustrated exhalation burst from John's lips before he could restrain himself. He threw himself away from the couch. "Yes, there is a problem! First you let me think you were DEAD for three years, and then you reappear and act as if nothing has happened when I spent three bloody years mourning you, and now you want me to go haring off with you on some mad trip across Europe in an effort to deliver a sodding flash drive that we could just as easily hand over to one of Mycroft's subordinates?" John dragged his hands over his face with a growl. "I have a job! I was finally getting readjusted to you actually being ALIVE, you great git, and now you're upsetting everything AG—"

Two loud cracks sounded as a bullet barely missed John's back and slammed through the wall opposite the window. John was on the floor before he had even stopped ranting; Sherlock was only a split second behind. Their gazes met as they lay there, frozen and listening for more shots. Eventually, Sherlock broke the stare to glance up at the bullet hole in the window. He shuffled across the floor in a military crawl, returning from the kitchen with a blunted bullet in his fist. He showed it to John. "This appears to be an 8.6 millimetre round. Sniper rifle, most likely, judging by the way the nose has crushed. Thoughts?"

John examined the bullet carefully, steadily becoming more worried. "The nose was hollow, the heel is boat-tailed, and judging by the weight, this is a solid tellurium round. This is a very-low-drag round—highly expensive, highly accurate, hits like a ton of bricks because it retains more of its energy. Definitely a sniper round." He glanced at the window and the wall, trying to judge the trajectory of the round. "They're on the second floor across the street. I think you may have a point about the whole leaving bit."

Sherlock merely winked and pulled himself into a low crouch, ducking into his room and beckoning for John to follow him. "Fire escape, John. Let's go." The detective grabbed a black leather bag from beneath his bed as he passed, then opened the window and paused for just a moment to wait for any shots to be taken. When none came, he was out and hastening down the fire escape.

Scrambling down the metal stairway, John had to admit that he was feeling quite exhilarated to be back on a chase. Granted, they were rather on the wrong end of the chase this time, but John honestly could not find it in himself to care as he kept pace with Sherlock. They darted across Euston, much to the consternation of two taxis and a lorry, and then half-ran half-leapt down the stairs to the Tube. "So how are we going to catch this aeroplane to Lebanon with someone looking for us?" John panted as Sherlock dropped the pace to a brisk walk. "Won't they be waiting for us at Heathrow?"

Sherlock quickly purchased a pair of Underground tickets; John recognised his Oyster card but kept his mouth shut. Now was not the time to bicker over whose property was whose. "I suspect they are only just learning who we are and who we're connected to. They don't know that Mycroft is out of country, however, and will likely wait for us at his London office rather than Heathrow. Furthermore, there are four major airports in London and unless they're much cleverer than I expected, they will not be able to cover even one before we arrive and board. We have just enough time; there are two to three flights a day from Heathrow and the next leaves at eight tonight."

John checked his wristwatch automatically. "That gives us two hours, then." Good Lord, Beirut. John hadn't been expecting to ever go back to the Middle East after being invalided home, but here they were, dodging snipers and catching a flight to Lebanon. Sinking into an empty seat, John dropped his head into his hands and tried to take deep breaths. "So much for business as usual."

A narrow hand rested on his shoulder. "Business as usual is staggeringly dull, John. Do try to keep up."

* * *

The formatting is being rather difficult. I can't seem to indent paragraphs, for whatever reason. Apologies for the mess! Thank you very much for reading thus far (this is my first fanfiction in around five or six years), and I hope it's enjoyable. Reviews would be extremely helpful as I continue; I have not had the benefit of a beta reader or Brit-picker! Thanks again. :)


	2. Chapter 2

As Sherlock had predicted, no one was waiting for them at the airport or on the aeroplane; they were able to purchase boarding passes and make it to the gate just as the boarding queues began to form. Normally Sherlock disdained having to wait in something so trivial as a queue, but air travel tended to go faster if one did not attempt to bend the rules (he had learned this through a great deal of trial and error; never again would he attempt to bypass the security checkpoints in an American airport). He busied himself with observing the weather (sun at ten degrees above the horizon, cloudbank and light wind coming from the west, pleasingly vivid Rayleigh and Mie scattering) until they were allowed to board.

The scent of an aeroplane's cabin had never been one of his favourites. Once one got past the muddled smell of humanity (bad cologne and perfume, deodorant, chewing gum, sweat, hair spray, cigarettes, coffee, salt) and the smell of the plastic seats and faux leather upholstery, the air itself smelled... dry and canned, for lack of a better word. Even the carbon-congested fug of London on a hot, still, summer day was vastly preferable by comparison. Sherlock was grateful to see that he had been assigned a window seat. If he couldn't have fresh air, he could at least have something interesting to look at.

"Like window seats, do you?" John's chuckle was warm and amused. A vague, expansive sensation spread like wings through Sherlock's chest, and he wondered if he was perhaps coming down with something? It was a strange feeling, though not unpleasant. "It's much better when the cabin is sealed. I always loved the view but hated the roar of the engines when I rode out."

That got Sherlock's attention. "Afghanistan," he said, meeting John's eyes. The doctor's face flickered through several expressions (warmth snapped into pensiveness, a flinty ferocity, remembered pain, and then dismissal) before settling on a slightly softer version of a soldier's stoic mask. Even his eyes, normally expressive and readable, were guarded.

"Yes." There was obviously more to it than that, but it was also obvious that no amount of wheedling or manipulation would pull it out of the doctor. John's eyes seemed to look somewhere distant for several long moments. Sherlock blinked, and then John was suddenly John again, as if he had simply switched off that other self, the soldier. "It'll be a night flight. You'll be able to see all the cities and roads, like a map."

It occurred to Sherlock suddenly that John didn't quite trust him. Annoyed and rather hurt (though he wouldn't admit that even to himself), Sherlock huffed and turned to the window again. "Dull." He could almost feel the weight of John's gaze on his back and firmly ignored it. He ignored the flight attendants and their idiotic safety speeches, ignored the reminder to please fasten his seatbelt, and very, very vigilantly ignored it when John reached around him, fished the ends of the seatbelt out from under him, and clicked the buckle of the belt with a put-upon sigh. He resolutely thought about the runway lighting and not about the sudden sense of being too cold after John settled back into his own seat.

Sherlock did not attempt conversation throughout takeoff. John could deal with boredom himself, if he didn't trust Sherlock with his past after Sherlock had trusted him with the Work. It was only fair.

Granted, fairness could hardly save Sherlock from boredom. So, when the towering, scarlet-limned edge of a thunderstorm crept into the frame of Sherlock's window, he observed the flashes of lightning and the slow roil of the clouds before beginning a discussion of positive versus negative lightning that would eventually lead to the (really rather alarming) damage that a strike could inflict upon the human body. As a doctor, John would probably be interested in that medical aspect, Sherlock thought. The neurological damage alone was interesting, especially considering how varied the effects were in scope and duration.

Of course, when Sherlock risked a glance at his flatmate, John was already gently slumped into his seat, his breathing slow and even with sleep. He paused for a moment, but began where he had left off in a slightly softer tone.

Whether John heard was only of minor import to Sherlock at this point; the storm, the lightning, and the effects of electricity on the human body were a welcome distraction from the boredom of a long flight. If Sherlock ever acknowledged his real motive for observing and analysing these things, he would have admitted that he was attempting to divert himself from the rattling, buzzing knot of terror, frustration, and relief that had settled somewhere just behind his sternum. It had been a near miss, that shot back at the flat, and Sherlock never, ever wanted to learn whether the inaccuracy had been a lucky break or pure incompetence. John was too important. There was only one of him. It was proving difficult to make him understand why Sherlock had been forced to fake his death, though, and if John was not nearby, Sherlock could neither benefit from his presence or prevent him from being harmed, and of course John had to make it difficult for him by being so wary and infuriatingly not trusting!

Of course, if John stayed, there would undoubtedly be more close calls and more important John-related things withheld from Sherlock, but the detective was selfish when it came to things Watson. He had studied emergency medical procedures during the more boring stretches of his absence, so if John ever came to harm under his protection, the detective was now a capable first responder, and John's chances of survival were very much improved. If anyone threatened John from close quarters, Sherlock was more than adequate with guns, knives, swords, and hand-to-hand combat. The more hideous of John's jumpers could probably conceal a bulletproof vest, though it was probably impractical to make him wear a combat helmet everywhere whenever a sniper threat popped up... also John would have to learn to refuse to wear any bomb vests, or avoid those situations entirely. Bombs were just not on.

Stubborn, stubborn John, Sherlock thought to himself as he glanced at his sleeping friend. Hopefully he would get over his fuss about Sherlock's departure; hopefully he would take the time to understand **why** that departure had been necessary and just **trust** that Sherlock had his best interests in mind. Honestly, he should just come back to Baker Street already. It was going to happen at some point, so why not expedite things? Besides, John was obviously someone who thrived on excitement and adrenaline. Short of another tour of duty or a career as a stuntman, Sherlock had the most to offer when it came to chases, standoffs, and the thrill of the hunt in general. Sherlock had every reason to keep every secret, to be the person John trusted. Obviously, John belonged with him, seeing as Sherlock could provide for him best.

If only John would just see things his way, perhaps Sherlock could finally get back to living life the way he'd wanted to for the past three years.

John startled awake as the world bounced. Seated, not much space to move, no visible threats, six exits, no clear shots except for directly next to him...

"John."

Sherlock's eyes were a strange mix of silver and bronze and worried. The day's events piled back into his brain, and John let out a groan of embarrassment. "Beirut. Right. Sorry," he breathed, trying to compose himself quickly before his obnoxiously observant flatmate was able to read into anything too deeply. Surely Sherlock wouldn't be able to peer straight into the dreams of convoys and tense naps stolen beneath the bellies of transports, never knowing if you'd wake up to the ground shaking from RPG blasts... John schooled himself and his emotions with admirable skill. "Rough landing, just startled me a bit."

The lie was detected but accepted; John was allowed to carry on with disembarking without having to dodge awkward questions about old habits suddenly resurfacing. Hopefully Sherlock would not press the issue.

It was very strange, leaving an airport without having any bags to retrieve. John wondered what exactly Sherlock planned to do about clothing, lodging, food, and all the rest—any clandestine military programme would surely have his and Sherlock's bank cards under careful scrutiny at this point. "Sherlock, what do we do without any of our things? What do you have in that bag? Do you keep a packed bag ready, then?"

Sherlock scoffed. "No. This, John, is what kept me alive for three years. The best disguises require careful observation as well as an extensive collection of cosmetics and props. I never bothered to unpack my things after returning to London; I felt this would be of assistance since we find ourselves in need of camouflage. As for obtaining lodging and suitable clothing, I have this." He glanced down at John, gave a small, wry smile, and deftly produced a bank card for the medic to inspect.

The good doctor's spluttering quickly became a hearty laugh. "You nicked Mycroft's card again. You're impossible!" John shook his head in amusement and elbowed his lanky friend (who was trying and failing to keep a straight face). "Sherlock, you really are lucky that you're his brother. He would vanish anyone else without batting an eye."

"I'm too useful to him; he'd have to do field work for a time if he 'vanished' me, and we both know that Mycroft and my sort of work are not the best of friends. Ah, here we are. _Taxi ojrah!_" Sherlock raised one arm, ignoring John's look of surprise at his sudden switch to Arabic.

A cab pulled up to the kerb; Sherlock and John piled in and relaxed into the seats. Sherlock and the cabbie spoke swiftly in Arabic as John attempted to pick out what they were saying with little success. His Pashto was quite good, and he could understand a little Farsi thanks to that, but Arabic was just different enough that he couldn't follow the conversation. Sherlock clearly knew what he was doing, though, and John trusted him to set them up appropriately. He settled for gazing out of the window, enjoying the blue sky, the decidedly not-British architecture, and the lush Mediterranean greenery.

"I have asked our driver to take us to the nearest shop where we might procure clothes; our luggage was lost, after all. From there we can catch another cab or a bus to a suitable hotel." Sherlock had settled down into his seat, long fingers folded together over his belly and his head tipped back against the headrest. "Inform me when we arrive; I need to plan our next moves."

John nodded and resumed gazing out at the Lebanese cityscape. "You do that, Sherlock." So maybe the man was a bit of a git, but this country was beautiful! Without the influence of a certain consulting detective (be it for good or for ill), John had never expected to leave England again. He could forgive Sherlock for the past three years... well, maybe a few days out of those three years had been made up for, but it was a start. A week in this city would be exciting. Beirut was supposed to be a melting pot of the Arab world, even if recent wars had resulted in the various religious groups settling into their own 'sections' of the city. The city had centuries of history to be explored, mosques and cathedrals to be admired, all sorts of different culinary traditions and styles to be experienced (John especially wanted to find _kehwah_ somewhere; he'd always enjoyed the sweetly-scented green tea when he was on duty in Afghanistan), and so much besides! If he was going to be shot at and on the run in a foreign country, he fully intended to enjoy the area as much as possible.

When fifteen minutes and several decent-looking shops had passed by the cab window, John began to wonder if the cabbie had a specific place in mind. While Sherlock did have Mycroft's card, it would probably be wise to keep costs at a minimum so the elder Holmes would not constantly seek restitution from his brother (and thus cause all sorts of headaches for John, who inevitably got dragged into Holmesian disputes).

John had just started to turn to Sherlock when the cabbie answered a mobile phone and began to speak in hushed Pashto. "I have passengers, I am sorry, isn't there someone else in the Guild that you can... I was taking them to the Westerner part of the city... no, yes, they're not... what? No, I can't do that. What? Why would you... I understand... all right, I will do it... don't hurt them, please. Tell me what to do." The cabbie saw John looking at him in the rear-view mirror. John's heart sank. He knew that expression too well after enough door-to-door sweeps of the villages in Kandahar Province—it was the cold, slow panic of a hostage.

"Keep him busy as long as you can. We will cooperate if you can pass us information," John murmured to the cabbie before turning to Sherlock and giving him a firm shake.

"What is it? I'm trying to think," the detective huffed, clearly unhappy about being jostled from his reverie. John covered his mouth to prevent any further outburst and made sure Sherlock could see that he was tense and on alert.

"Listen to me, Sherlock. You managed to land us a cabbie with someone holding someone important to him hostage. Hostile's on the mobile, being delayed. Let me translate. He's speaking in Pashto," John whispered. Sherlock nodded, silver eyes wide, and John lowered his hand.

Translating softly to the detective, John listened in to the cabbie's side of the conversation. "So I am to bring them to the warren? I understand, yes. The gas? You are sure? It will only make them unconscious? Surely the failsafe is enough to ensure they are silent and cooperative... ah. I see. That is wise, sir. It will not get through the partition? Fine, yes, it will be done. You are merciful and wise, sir..."

Sitting back, John pinched the bridge of his nose with one hand. "So much for my _kehwah_ and falafels..." he sighed, closing his eyes as the cabbie ended his call and shut the partition window. Looking over at Sherlock, John offered a lopsided smile. "Didn't think I'd be doing this whole 'abducted' thing out here again."

Despite the situation, Sherlock only appeared to be petulant. "John, when we wake up, you're going to explain the meaning of "again" to me. I cannot find a way out of this if I do not know about every fact, skill, and experience you have at your disposal. I resent being in the dark on these things."

There was a soft click and a hiss; a sweet scent became detectable. John chuckled. "If anyone gets us out of this, it'll be me, Sh'lock... I'm... the one that got away last time." He felt his eyelids grow heavy and let the sleepy sensation carry him off.

_High overhead, Basha's pale buff and umber wings were a stark contrast to the hot blue of the sky. Atash watched with unabashed pride as his hunting partner folded his wings and dove down into the scrub. There was a moment of thrashing, a squeal, and then silence. John followed the lanky Afghan to where the Saker falcon had pinned the hare, following the sound of the silver bells on the bird's jesses. He admired the grace with which Atash could navigate the scrubland, wondering if he would ever look even half that good out on the desert. _

_Atash plucked falcon and hare from the ground, gently prying the bird's talons away from the animal before neatly severing its haunch and offering the limb to the bird. Basha snatched the leg away and mantled over it, tiny and ferocious. "God, he's gorgeous," John breathed as the falcon fixed him with an onyx-eyed stare. Atash glowed with the praise, regarding John with fondness as he tucked the hare into his bag. He launched Basha into the sky with a graceful motion of his arm and watched as the falcon began to circle for altitude._

"_Basha is my pride. We are a team, he and I, and I am glad that you find us pleasing, John." Coming from Atash's lips, Pashto was like music, John decided. How had he ever been so lucky to end up friends and then so much more with such a beautiful child of the desert? Atash was all long, willowy limbs and cinnamon skin where John was leather-tan and stocky; it seemed impossible to John that his short British self was at all attractive to the work of art that was the young interpreter. _

_As Basha's shadow flickered over them, John felt a sudden bolt of terror, and then he was down in the scrubby growth, gazing up in frozen horror as he realised the bird soaring overhead had spotted him. Why would Basha be staring at him? He was not prey. Where had Atash gone? "Atash?" John called, running back towards camp, hoping to find the young man on the way. "Atash! Atash, where are you?" The lanky Afghan was nowhere to be seen, and then there was a sudden whistling sound, and eight sharp points were digging into him as something shook him, pinned him, he was trapped, and someone was shouting but he couldn't get out, the talons were like steel..._

"John! John, wake up, you're only dr—_oof!_"

Sherlock was wide-eyed and still beneath John, his pulse pounding in his pale throat under John's hands. John gasped, recoiled, threw himself away and found a wall to curl against. He suspected he was groaning or keening, definitely shaking, but he couldn't care less, he had been _choking_ Sherlock, he could have _killed_ him, what had that great, gawky idiot been _thinking...?_

"You may be right about the idiot part. And no, I did not read your mind, that's preposterous. You're talking to yourself." Sherlock didn't sound angry, and his voice seemed even. John did not move away from the wall, even if he did relax a little. After a while, he sat up and rested his forehead against the cool whitewashed surface.

"I could have hurt you."

"Don't be dull, John. I am unhurt. Why fuss?"

John paused in his close examination of the wall to send his own version of Sherlock's 'are you daft' glare at the detective. He ignored it when Sherlock sat down nearby and leaned against the wall. "It's the principle of the thing, Sherlock."

"I'm not dead."

That upended a whole box of roiling, frustrated emotions that John thought he had managed to get past. "Would have been lovely to know that three years ago, ta. Piss off, would you?"

Naturally, Sherlock did no such thing. He did fall silent, but John could feel his gaze on him, analysing and quantifying whatever it was that Sherlock analysed and quantified (probably everything but the necessary things in this situation, like emotional cues). John didn't turn away, even though the thought occurred to him, but he didn't turn toward Sherlock either, just rested his head against the wall and tried to ground himself again. Everything in the present was messy enough; John did not need past problems to suddenly pop up again in his thoughts.

His mobile and wristwatch were absent (probably confiscated, his wallet was gone too), so John really had no idea how long the two of them sat there in silence. There was occasionally sound from outside the room, but without windows, there was no way to know what time of day it was or where they were. Turning around to sit against the wall, John saw that they were in a small room, perhaps the size of their sitting room back on Baker Street, and the only openings were a door in the opposite wall and a vent in the ceiling. The lights were dim fluorescent bulbs hung from the ceiling with gaffer tape (the wires ran through a gap between the top of the door and the sill), and the walls, floor, and ceiling were all whitewashed. The room was cool, surprisingly so, which led John to suspect that they were underground somewhere. Without windows and only one small vent, air conditioning seemed unlikely.

Sherlock was stretched out on the floor, propped up on his elbows with his jacket folded neatly under him. He was writing and sketching on the floor with a marker, his lips moving silently as he worked. John could read notes about the whitewash, the light fixtures, the door, the sounds, and the temperature; Sherlock had also reached the conclusion that they were below ground and was trying to derive more useful information from what little data he had.

"Do you think this is related to the drive?" John asked after Sherlock had scribbled over his notes in a fit of pique. He was now drawing up a periodic table of the elements, complete with state and group labels.

"I doubt it. Our cabbie was not expecting this, either. Probabilities point to this being a simple case of very bad luck."

John groaned. Bad luck that resulted in strings of unrelated attacks, abductions, and god knew what else—just what they needed. "This is a Thursday, isn't it? Bloody Thursdays. I can never seem to sort them out."

Sherlock sniffed at that, not looking up from his construction of the lanthanide series. "Thursday though it may be, statistics show that Tuesdays are the most difficult day of the week. More suicides happen on Tuesday than any other day, also."

"Well, today is Thursday, Thursdays are generally horrible to me, and today has been a right mess. Data supports the hypothesis and all that. Have you got another marker? I'm bored."

There was not another marker, and Sherlock did not look to be in a collaborating sort of mood (even if John thought amino acids were a fine thing to follow a periodic table). Peeling off his jumper, John tried to make some sort of pillow out of it and curled up in the nearest corner with his back to the walls. He really should have known better than to hope that any sort of escapade involving Sherlock would result in any sort of rest or relaxation. In fact, he should have expected abduction, prepared for it, even. It seemed to be the way things worked when it came to The Work—nothing was ever simple, everything was dangerous, and the events and mechanics of things often edged into the realm of Follett thrillers.

Ideally, this mess would not involve stolen uranium, forcible erasure of memories, Mossad, satellites, or anything remotely related to the Russian government. Ideally, this would end up being some well-meaning effort to get Westerners to recognise the situation in Syria or some other nation in turmoil (and there were an awful lot of those in the area these days). They could go take a look at things on the ground, get out intact, make a few statements, and then meet Mycroft to deliver the drive and its contents.

Oh.

The drive.

John leapt up and grabbed Sherlock's shoulders. "Sherlock! The... the important thing, the... damn subtlety! The drive! They've taken everything but your bloody marker, they must have it now! What do we do?"

Sherlock looked down at the floor between John's knees; he made such a petulant moue that John almost felt sorry for smudging the nonmetals and noble gases. "Oh ye of little faith. John, honestly." The detective sighed, twisted his head as if to relieve an ache in his neck, and then pulled a neatly rolled plastic bag containing the flash drive from between his lips. He presented it to John with a flourish. "Pockets are less than desirable as places for securing important items."

The logic was perfectly sound, and John really couldn't argue since he hadn't had a clue that Sherlock had chosen such an... unorthodox hiding place. He wondered how Sherlock had kept from accidentally swallowing the thing when the cabbie had put them to sleep, too, but mostly he was trying very hard to forget the fact that such a feat required the complete banishment of the gag reflex.


	3. Chapter 3

Trigger warnings: Sexual assault, related conversation

* * *

Sherlock had just tucked the drive into his trouser pocket when the door opened to admit four men with ballistic vests under their caftans and rifles slung over their shoulders. Sherlock and John were hustled to their feet and held at gunpoint while two of the men bound their wrists behind them with zip ties; all four men stood smartly at attention as a fifth strode into the room.

There was something different about the way the fifth man moved. John was almost reminded of Sherlock's effortless agility, but not quite—this was less a sinewy grace and more a perfectly controlled power. John couldn't tell much about the man's build due to the loose _shalwar qamiz_ and caftan he was wearing, but his precisely-mastered movements were enough to tell John that the man was probably very, very dangerous in hand-to-hand combat. He was tall, too, taller even than Sherlock, and carried himself with unyielding authority.

The fifth man paused a few steps away and regarded John and Sherlock silently, his arms folded across his chest. The edges of his _keffiyeh_ were pulled across his face so only his eyes were visible; John felt almost skewered under the steely, onyx gaze. He couldn't help a relieved, slow exhalation as Fifth's gaze shifted to Sherlock.

When Sherlock showed no discernible discomfort under that stare, Fifth tipped his chin up in Sherlock's direction. The two soldiers near the detective wasted no time in forcing him to his knees. "Better," said Fifth in flawless, unaccented English as the detective snarled and glared up at him from where he knelt. "I find the arrogance of the frail... distasteful."

John froze momentarily when he heard that voice. Fifth noted this immediately, swinging around to watch with keen, predatory interest. John could only stare back, trying to ignore the sounds of the two rifles being cocked next to him. There was no way this could be _him_, but it might explain why he had dreamt of that after such a long, long time. John forced himself to move, stood straighter under Fifth's gaze, and glared back defiantly. "What do you want, Atash?" he growled, earning a jab from the soldier on his left.

"I thought I recognised you when my men brought you in, John. I am pleased that you remember me." Atash was practically purring as he circled John thoughtfully. "You've aged. Softened." John couldn't help flinching away from the too-warm breath that curled over his shoulder. He put on a blank face and tried to ignore the revulsion roiling in his gut as Atash inhaled deeply against the side of his throat. He flinched again as Atash stroked his arms. "You stink of the West, John, and of this... foreigner. Forgot about this part of the world, have you? Left us behind to stagger beneath the ruins of our nations? Or have you forsaken me because I tried to do what was right for my people, not yours?"

"Get away from me, Atash," John managed to hiss, his eyes closed against the sensation of Atash breathing over his neck and the memories it evoked. He was beginning to feel nauseous, and every time Atash's hands returned to pet his arms or his back, he tried to jerk away. "I said stop it! Why are we here?!"

"I wanted to bring Westerners to see what the people are enduring at the hands of tyrants, to use your arrogance to bring down those who would kill any dissenters to maintain power, but I was not expecting you to be here, John." Narrow, callused fingertips dragged over his cheek, preventing him from jerking away as warm lips and then a tongue pressed to the side of his throat. John couldn't seem to get his breathing under control, couldn't seem to stop shaking, felt as if he might throw up at any moment. "Now I think I want to begin where we left off. You would forgive old mistakes, wouldn't you?"

"_Cease touching him this instant!_" Sherlock roared, surging to his feet. Atash merely smirked against John's throat as the detective was thrown to his knees a second time. Sherlock struggled against the two soldiers holding him down. "Taking advantage of a person at gunpoint only reinforces the reality of your impotence and cowardice!"

John met Sherlock's gaze as Atash's grip on his face and shoulder tightened considerably. "Don't. He'll... don't make him angry, for the love of god, stop, don't do this." John glanced at the two rifle barrels that were now trained on his flatmate's head. "Stay out of this, please. I don't want you hurt."

Atash laughed and grabbed a handful of John's hair, yanking his head down to expose his neck. "Yes, _foreigner,_ listen to John. Whether you like it or not, you _will_ stay out of this." John shuddered as Atash ran his tongue from ear to clavicle. "John was mine long before he ever met you, and I intend to take him back. He belongs with me, not in your stinking cities." John could see Sherlock thinking, silvery eyes flashing from point to point, marking vulnerable spots. The detective redoubled his efforts to get to his feet, drawing a pleased chuckle from Atash. "Oh, dislike that, do you?" John hissed and jerked as teeth suddenly broke skin and dug in between his neck and shoulder. Gritting his teeth, he ignored the warm drip of blood as Atash pulled away. "He belongs to me, do you see?"

"John Watson belongs to no one but himself!"

Atash circled back around to face John. "And yet it is no effort for me to do as I wish with him," he purred, bloodstained lips curled into a smile. John spat on him as he reached to card a hand through John's hair. "I always did enjoy your fighting spirit. Don't you remember, John? You're mine."

"Go fuck a pig," John snarled, kneeing the taller man in the groin. Atash doubled over, and the soldiers on either side of John shoved him to his knees. He saw the butt of the rifle coming and braced himself, but there was little he could do. He was knocked out almost instantly.

* * *

They sat on the floor in the back of a van, tied back to back with canvas bags over their heads. Atash had decided to move them while John was still unconscious; he had awakened to the bag falling over his face. He'd probably left the goon manhandling him with a sizeable black eye before they were able to get him restrained, but that didn't do much to make him feel any better.

Sherlock had been silent thus far, but John could almost hear him thinking, turning everything over in that mind palace of his. He could tell when Sherlock was ready to ask him about what had happened, and while some part of him dreaded explaining, a greater part of him desperately needed to clear the air. Everything was too mad, too dangerous for the distraction of keeping a secret that had just been exposed to Sherlock bloody Holmes. "John. Tell me who that was."

John winced as the van jolting over a pothole sent a sharp pain through his shoulder. "I suppose I can't very well avoid it," he said as he gingerly rolled his shoulder in tiny circles. The detective had mostly staunched the bleeding from the bite by the time the goons had returned, but the pain had settled into a constant, hot stinging, as if the area around the wound had been stung by far too many bees. "I don't know the four that pushed us around, but the fifth... that was Atash. I... er, knew him, back in Afghanistan."

The vibrations from Sherlock's voice were tangible at John's back, even over the constant rumble of the van and the road. "Don't mince words, John." Disgust and fury warred in Sherlock's tone; the last time John had heard anything like that, it had been when the American intelligence agent had broken into the flat and hurt Mrs. Hudson. That Sherlock was outraged on _his_ behalf made John feel like smiling and sobbing at the same time.

John buried his face in his knees and breathed deeply, slowly. He'd never told anyone about what had happened with Atash; he barely even let himself think about it. It had been so easy to just forget after he went back to service with a new unit and while he and Sherlock had been careening about London after criminals. After Sherlock's Fall (he still thought of it as The Fall, capital T capital F), he had been too caught up in his grief to even bother with things that came before life at Baker Street. The memories were all there and vivid as ever, though, even after nearly five years. "He... he had been assigned to my section as our interpreter. He befriended all of us, but we... he and I were closer. We could finish each others' sentences, talk for hours."

Sherlock was quiet as he processed. "You were lovers."

Lovers. John couldn't help the sob that escaped him. Did that even do it justice? At least, did it do the initial times, the good times, justice? "The closest. I'd never been so close to _anyone_, even the girlfriend I had to leave in England. Oh god, Sherlock, we did everything together, supported each other, _everything._ I can't believe I fell for it, I should have known better!" John thumped his head into his knees and squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to cry. "It was six incredible months, six whole months of sharing everything, being the halves of some greater whole, and the whole time, he had been sending our positions to the Taliban. I... I like to think we had something real, but... you see, we were ambushed. We went to bed together, were right in the middle of things, and suddenly he's got a gun to my head and he's telling me that I would live if I stayed still and quiet." The tears flashed to fury in a heartbeat with the memory of that betrayal, and John viciously kicked the wall of the van. "Every man but me, dead, and I only survived because I was a good fuck and Atash was owed favours."

"He took you captive."

John nodded. "They had me dress and gather my kit, took everyone's weapons, zip-tied my hands, blindfolded me, and tossed me in the back of a truck with everything else. They drove for the better part of a day, and when the blindfold came off, I was in a room in a cave, where they sent Atash to get information out of me for nearly two weeks."

The van hit a large bump; Sherlock and John landed on their sides amongst small boxes and what felt like a weapons rack. John groaned, curling around himself as waves of hot, stinging pain radiated down his right arm and side. "Are you bleeding again, John? John?"

"_Fucking hell! _Just _hurts_, Sherlock, Jesus does it hurt, damn that bitey git!" John pulled them up despite the pain in his shoulder and scooted so they were braced against the weapons rack. "Fuck. So... right. For two weeks, he'd start with trying to explain himself, then he'd try to seduce me, which always ended up with him getting angry when I rejected him, and then he'd torture me for information I almost never had."

"The small scars on your back... that's what they're from, isn't it?"

John was surprised; he hadn't thought Sherlock had seen him without some sort of shirt on. "I... yes, it is." He pulled his knees up to his chest and huddled in on himself a bit. He still had misgivings about anyone seeing or touching his back; getting used to friendly pats, claps, and arms about the shoulders had been a long process. The few times he'd been in bed with a woman since getting invalided home, he'd kept the lights out and muffled questions with kisses and distracting ministrations. People who saw them always asked, and being asked meant having to remember, so he kept them hidden. "No one's supposed to see those."

"I haven't seen them, John. There are raised spots. Given the regular, close spacing, my best hypothesis was scarring. Without seeing it, I had no way to ascertain what the origin of the wound was." Sherlock explained, very matter-of-fact. "I see no reason to be ashamed of them, John."

"Shame isn't the problem, Sherlock. I was on a short chain, blindfolded with earplugs in, wondering where and when Atash would cut next. I spent two weeks begging him to stop. I endured two weeks of torture, terrible sleep, almost no food or water, and people cursing me, kicking me, dragging me around. I only knew where the floor and the wall were because I was thrown into them so much. I had no way to guard myself or hide. Does that sound like shame to you?" John couldn't help the bitterness in his tone—as if it was issues with shame!

Sherlock had the good sense to give an apologetic noise. "Not shame. Understood."

John sighed. "I'm sorry. I... it's... Ella calls it trust issues. I... I don't like crowds. Don't like having people behind me. Hate being blindfolded. Can't sleep without my back to a wall, can't take the Tube without standing by a wall or sitting down. Hate queues. Sarah hugged me from behind once and scared me half to death. I barely stopped myself from throwing her over my shoulder to the floor. Haven't been able to be in a relationship without questioning my partner's motives constantly." John shook his head. "It's a lot of things. A twenty-three scalpel still makes me break out in a cold sweat."

"Is this bothering you? Me being behind you?"

Chuckling, John shook his head. "No. We're back to back. If you had control, I would be anxious; this is mutual vulnerability." He leaned back into Sherlock in what he hoped was a reassuring gesture. "Don't... don't worry about it, if you were. Sorry to just lay all that on you."

Sherlock leaned into John, too, tipping his head back so it rested on the smaller man's. Worry was a part of what he was feeling, as was curiosity, but the rest was a toothy, snarling hybrid of mortification and protective rage. He couldn't find the words to express it properly, mostly because he'd not felt anything that intense for another person's sake in recent memory. It made him wonder how John could elicit such emotions from him, when he was so sure he'd locked away his sentiment for good.

Despite all his claims of sociopathy, Sherlock had wanted to share his mind palace with someone for a long time. It was a place of faceted crystal and filigree clockwork wrought from precious metals, where furnaces of thought burned with the light of suns and water from primordial seas raced through translucent lines of ideas and concepts. Everything had its place, its compartment, its room—it was a sentient, self-aware library-palace, autonomous and ever in motion. There were entire vaulted antechambers of wonder, places where quarks, molecules, worlds, suns, and galaxies all seemed part of some huge _works_, every part tuned to the next like some sort of fractal symphony. The palace in its entirety hummed and sang, each piece tuned and in tune with the next. It was huge and awe-inspiring and sometimes so enormous that even he couldn't quite comprehend the intricacy. It was a place where simple things could take on special meaning, where each unique confluence of variables had the potential to move him like a work of art.

He had quickly learned, however, that most people didn't see the beauty or elegance of the world, nor did they want to share in it with him. The people that gravitated to him never wanted him for him; they wanted him for his brilliance as a tool or for his beauty as a toy. Some made him their universe and then demanded he forsake his Work to reciprocate their idolisation. Some were good people in their own right, but could never hold his interest or hope to understand how his mind worked. Whenever he approached others or tried to fit in, he invariably found himself picking up the pieces after yet another rejection, yet another branding as 'freak'.

After enough of those rejections and denigrations, he had put doors of diamond with perfect locks between himself and those chambers of awe and sentiment. They caused him too much harm, beautiful as they were, and he could not afford to let them be damaged any further by that pain, so he decided to refuse them for himself and only peer through the doors. He had built around his palace in cold steel and stone, hiding the crystal and polished metals away. Only the parts of the world he wanted were allowed to enter, and only the light of the Work was allowed to leave. His palace was dark and lonely but it was safe and it was _his._ It was shelter, safety, solitude.

Perhaps John did not have a palace or even a manor (Sherlock often imagined a cosy, sturdy Welsh cottage with verdant gardens and a round, green door sitting in the midst of a military base in the Afghani desert), but it was John's inner space. This Atash person had insinuated himself into it, even made himself a part of it, and then left it in ruins, using the toppled stones and crushed plants for his own devices.

Sherlock had to fight a shudder of outrage. John was _good_. John had a core of steel, an infallible moral compass. John was likable and trustworthy, smoothing Sherlock's way through the idiot masses in case after case. John did not hesitate to kill in order to protect the people he cared about from genuine threats. Even when he was not as observant as Sherlock, even when he missed the important things, he still found ways to make himself indispensable. John could not continue to be unfailingly _good_ if this Atash person compromised the foundation of his inner space again. He would be distracted, sad, distressed, perhaps even traumatized. If John suffered, the Work would suffer... and, by extension, Sherlock would suffer.

That simply could not be allowed to happen, obviously. John's stability (if not happiness) was a necessity, so Sherlock would have to control the variables of the equation. Atash was the largest negative, so removing or cancelling his influence was priority one. Considering the trauma that Atash inflicted upon John in the past, considering the physical and mental scarring, Sherlock's first instinct was to rip Atash out of the equation with as much violence as possible, preferably with his bare hands. He flexed his fingers in anticipation; it would be worth it if it meant protecting John.

"Sherlock?"

"I... was thinking," Sherlock said, and mentally grimaced at his less-than-eloquent response.

John chuckled at that. "At a loss for words, then? I suppose that's preferable to a pity party." He gave Sherlock a friendly nudge with his unhurt shoulder. "Thanks for... thanks for passing on the 'oh poor John' speech. I'm past the worst of it, really, though I'm not looking forward to seeing him again." Understatement of the year, John thought to himself wryly, but now that he wasn't alone in knowing what was going on, well... he felt as if they could sort the whole mess out with a bit of ingenuity and stubbornness (and perhaps the delivery of a swift kick to the bollocks to a certain abductor).

"As if I would subject you to such a thing," Sherlock scoffed. "You are a survivor, John. I am well aware that you do not need pity." He shifted his weight; John heard a surprised 'Oh!' and felt Sherlock stretch to reach something.

Bracing himself using the wall of the van, John took a bit of Sherlock's weight in an effort to help. "Got something?"

Sherlock settled down and gave a self-satisfied chuckle. "If by something you mean a folding knife sturdy enough to manage zip ties, then yes, I've got something. If all goes well, we shall make our escape tonight."

John grinned and sat up straighter, heartened. "Clever git. Find me some paracetamol for my shoulder and anything for dry skin, would you? My elbow's driving me 'round the bend."

"Not your nursemaid, John Watson." Sherlock replied in a passable imitation of Mrs. Hudson, which sent John into a fit of giggles, which were ridiculous enough that Sherlock found himself chuckling also. John was just getting himself under control when what was probably an empty beer can connected with the side of his head; that and Sherlock's offended, petulant huff set him off all over again. Somewhere in the back of his mind, John figured he was a bit hysterical, but if that meant giggling at crime scenes and in the backs of abductors' vans, well, so be it. Sherlock was there; what else mattered?

* * *

Ugh. Terrible pacing at the end; forgive me! Otherwise... wow. I've never written something that heavy before. Wasn't even expecting to, really, but the story just sort of took itself there. Please let me know how I did, or if anything should be changed. I tried to be as respectful of the topics of abuse and assault as possible; they're very serious, grave subjects and I don't want to make them seem any less so.

If you or someone you know might be in an abusive relationship or have suffered an assault of any sort, please please please seek help and support! Friends and family are lifesavers; God only knows where I'd be without mine.


	4. Chapter 4

Warnings for violence. Working in some new territory as a writer here; hopefully the action scenes are passable.

* * *

John wasn't sure about the precise amount of time they had spent in that damn van, but he was very sure of a few things: the roads were terrible if they even existed, the bite wound on his right shoulder was being assaulted by invisible bees, and the itching sensation on his elbow had spread to his other elbow, not to mention his right hand and his knees. It was too hot, even by John's standards, and by the time they were unceremoniously dumped to the ground at their destination, he would gladly have given his Browning and several of his favourite jumpers for a litre of cold water. They were left sitting there for some time before anyone bothered with them.

Rough hands on John's arms dragged him to his feet; Sherlock was hauled up with him. Someone tugged impatiently at the ropes tying them together and pulled them away. John's wrists were unbound and then zip-tied in front of him, and shortly he was reattached to the detective's wrists by means of another irritating plastic cable. They were left standing there facing each other, blind and bound, listening the sounds of setting camp rattled, flapped, and clattered around them. John muttered a few choice curses at no one in particular as Sherlock turned this way and that, tugging on the ties at their wrists.

"We're in the desert," Sherlock remarked after several minutes of fidgeting. "It's late, nearing sunset. I have decided that I loathe cable ties, also. They chafe. All I can smell is sand, rock, and dry earth; when can we leave this miserable place? I don't even know where we are, and I always know where I am. Hateful. This is hateful."

John tested the ground with one foot while Sherlock ranted, finding loose and half-buried rocks of several smallish sizes, a thin layer of dust or sand, and hard-packed earth. He knew the scents of the desert well enough, however, that he could pick up on a little more than just the obvious. He elbowed Sherlock to shut him up. "I'm getting a faint resinous smell and just a hint of water. It's not the sea, though—it's fresh, but distant. We're either in a flattish region or we're in a flow channel, but there's exposed stone nearby, judging by the amount of gravel in the ground."

Someone grabbed their wrists and shoved them into motion. Sherlock grunted a protest at this, but John shushed him to listen to their surroundings. He could hear weapons being taken apart (likely for cleaning, the van had been somewhat dusty), boots being shucked, cloth flapping overhead (canopies, tarps, flags?), the plastic clatter of some sort of electronic equipment, and the quiet static hiss of a radio headset. Five or six people were performing their evening prayer somewhere ahead and to his left, confirming Sherlock's estimation of the time. From what he was hearing, there were eight to twelve men that were currently making any sort of sound; unless there was a large group of men being silent, John suspected that the group consisted of thirteen men in all, three groups of four and then Atash commanding.

The camp was clustered into a small area, judging by the concentration of the noise within a certain distance—not bright if they were expecting ranged explosives of any sort—and seemed to be fairly open to the elements, leading him to suspect there were canopies rather than tents providing shelter. John felt more than heard it when they were prodded into an actual tent; the breeze was cut off abruptly and left him feeling too warm.

Light assaulted John's eyes as the bag was pulled from his head. He cursed and heard Sherlock hiss in displeasure. Squinting as his eyes struggled to adjust, John could see that they were standing in the middle of a small tent. The goon that had unmasked them was standing in the dusk gloom with his back to them just outside the lone exit; the weatherproof cloth walls of the tent were staked firmly into the dry ground and pulled taut as drums. A large cluster of naked LEDs in the crook of the roof lit the interior with bright shades of blue and grey.

"Well, cutting our way out's right out," John sighed as he nudged the wall with one foot. "Material's tight. It'll make too much noise as it splits. That and there's a camera in the light."

Sherlock hummed in response as he inspected the tent, the LED cluster and its camera, and the ground. Seemingly satisfied, he walked up to the guard at the door (dragging John with him) and cleared his throat expectantly. "We need water."

The guard looked blank; Sherlock growled. "Water. Eau. Maa'. Ab."

At the last word, the guard suddenly understood. He muttered to another man who was nearby, and shortly a canteen was tossed into the tent. The detective and the doctor sat down again and took turns, one sipping from the bottle while the other sat there with his arms held out so they could reach. "The least they could have done is left us each a free hand," John grumbled as the bite on his shoulder began to act up again. "I need to clean this thing. I'm worried it's infected."

Sherlock deftly lidded the canteen and set it aside. He twisted one hand and found the clip of the tie around his left wrist, then delicately wiggled one fingernail under the latch tongue of the zip. Gripping the zip, he slowly pried back the latch and slipped the zip off of the cable, freeing his hand. He flexed it and shook it out, sighing in relief. "Mistake to use such a large gauge of cable. Anyone with fingernails can open them like that." He made quick work of the other tie, glancing up at John every so often. "I doubt they'll be alarmed by this, if that's what you're thinking. I'm unarmed, after all."

John cringed and hissed as Sherlock pulled the collar of his jumper aside to get a look at the bite. "Look for redness, swelling, heat, or drainage," he said through gritted teeth as Sherlock prodded the wound. It would be just his luck to get some sort of horrible infection or disease from being bitten by a deranged ex.

"Oh, curious," Sherlock murmured. John furrowed his brow in alarm—when Sherlock thought something was curious, it was usually horrific, unexpected, exploding, or dead. He sincerely hoped that this was simply something unexpected, like a chipped tooth leaving a certain imprint. "His cuspid teeth are enormous, John. The wound is easily four millimeters deeper there."

"What?"

Sherlock rolled his eyes and huffed out an exasperated sigh. "I said his cuspids—his canine teeth, the pointy ones—are much longer than usual. Please don't make me repeat myself, you know I loathe it."

"Last I checked he didn't have fangs, Sherlock." John brought his (still bound) wrists to his shoulder and gently felt around the bite. "How can you even tell? It's all scabbed over."

Sherlock pressed gently on one of the scabs. "Where his incisors cut, the scabbing isn't very substantial. He probably pierced the outermost layer of skin and a small part of the next. Where his cuspids pierced, the scabbing is significant and deep. Furthermore, I remember how much blood there was. He almost certainly reached the adipose layer." He prodded the skin around the wound, spread his hand and lightly pressed his palm over the wound. "Hot but not overly so, inflammation but no drainage. Significant bruising."

Apparently the examination was over, for Sherlock sat back abruptly, closed his eyes, and laced his fingers beneath his chin, breathing deeply and slowly. John was about to comment when he noticed that Sherlock's knuckles were white. Oh. His jaw was set, too, and his posture was rather rigid if not upright... oh. Oh! "Sherlock. It's... don't worry about it. I've had worse."

Glasz eyes, seemingly luminous in the cool blue-white lighting, briefly fixed John with a piercing gaze before closing again. "I'm not _worried_," the detective rumbled pointedly.

John felt as if he was a balloon and had just been pricked with a needle. "Oh," he sighed, bowing his head. He jumped as Sherlock suddenly seized his wrists and began to undo the zip ties with sharp, frustrated movements. "I... sorry? Ow, ow! Easy there. I just thought, well... you seemed rather tense, still do actually, and..."

"I am not worried, John; you are bowed but never broken." Sherlock flung the un-tied zip ties across the tent as John rolled and flexed his wrists. "I hardly need to worry about your emotional state." He drew his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms around his legs, and buried his face in his kneecaps.

John wasn't sure if he was being complimented, dismissed, or sulked at. "I wouldn't mind if you considered my emotional state sometimes, you know." That didn't elicit a response. "So, if you're not worried, Sherlock, then what are you?"

Lifting his head just enough that he could peer out over the tops of his arms, Sherlock cast a baleful, icy glare toward the door of the tent before hiding his face again. "_Thinking._"

John was confused enough that he couldn't decide if he felt hurt or reassured. Figuring it was probably better to muddle through his emotions in the morning, he opted for feeling tired and scooted to one corner of the tent to sleep.

* * *

Sherlock heard the first howl somewhere around ten thirty PM. It grabbed him by the hindbrain and shook him out of his reverie with a jolt of cold terror that seemed to freeze him to the floor. John flinched and curled up into a tight ball when the second cry went up into the night, his hands flying to his ears. He searched the tent without moving and eventually locked gazes with Sherlock. "What... is that, Sherlock?"

"A... a wolf," Sherlock said, somewhat uncertainly. "I do believe that is a wolf, John." The noise trailed off, but began anew after a few seconds. John twitched again.

Neither of them mentioned it, but both of their minds were back in the dark, fog-laced moors of Baskerville. If there had been a Hound, if it had ever howled, both were certain that _this_ would be its cry—low, rolling, resonant, and _menacing._ It was almost reassuring to be under guard in the middle of a camp of their abductors when there was something big and mean enough to produce _that_ noise on the prowl.

The thing howled one more time, then fell silent. When no more noises seemed to be forthcoming, John lowered his hands from his head and sat up gingerly. "Christ, I feel sorry for whatever's being chased by that brute," he sighed, peeling back the tent flap and peering out into the night. With the LED cluster still on, Sherlock could only see blackness beyond the threshold. "You stay there, Sherlock. Go back to thinking."

Settling himself in the tent door, John found himself falling into old watch routines faster than he had expected. Granted, he didn't have all of the gear he'd enjoyed back when he was attached to the First Queen's (night vision goggles, footage from drone overflights, combat armour, radio contact with the rest of his unit, and oh did he miss his Samaritan), but a watch was a watch, with or without clever gadgetry. The goon guarding the tent didn't seem to mind his company, at least; he seemed just as unnerved by the noise as John had been.

There was some shuffling from somewhere in the camp, followed by low murmurs, then the sound of someone heaving himself to his feet with a sigh. The reluctant patrolman shuffled off beyond the camp and began a wide, ambling loop; John could hear his scuffling steps until well after he had gone from sight.

John had watched the unhappy patrolman make his circuit twice when the howling began again, suddenly and very much closer. The tent guard leapt to his feet as John scrambled back into the tent, putting himself between the detective and the door. Lights began to come on throughout the camp, followed shortly by the sounds of body armour and weapons being donned and loaded.

"Jesus, what are they expecting?" John breathed as he listened to the nervous bustle outside. "Is it some sort of signal?" The tense, expectant atmosphere was beginning to sizzle at the edges of his composure, even as his hands steadied and his breathing evened. He remembered tense nights spent wide awake and waiting for the enemy with mixed nostalgia and loathing; he loved the rush, but the waiting game almost always drove him half-mad with impatience.

Sherlock crouched next to John and peered out of the tent flap. "If that was a signal, it was not one they wanted to get," he remarked, refusing to budge when John tried to move him back. "John. I am not some sort of damsel in distress."

"Bully for you, Sherlock, but I'm _not_ losing you again." John tried to push Sherlock behind him again, but the detective still would not move. "Don't do this, you great berk, I can't be worrying about you when every bastard here is armed and on edge!" When Sherlock still refused to move or even acknowledge him, John's patience ended. He grabbed the detective by the shoulders and turned him; placing a hand on each of his cheeks, John forced the detective to meet his gaze. Sherlock's eyes were wide and startled as John drew in close. "You don't get it, do you? I can't _do_ this right now, Sherlock. I can't... I can't do _that_ again, can't lose you again. You don't know what it's like... what it's like out here. I do. Now let. Me. Help. You."

Sherlock nodded mutely, staring into John's eyes as he and John sat there, inches apart, breathing heavily while the howling and sounds of weapons being locked and loaded continued unabated outside. John broke away first, too overwhelmed by the adrenaline and pent-up emotion. He needed to focus if he wanted to stay on top of whatever this situation was, and as much as he would have liked to get the emotional issues out of the way, now was very much not the time.

The howling died away again. John edged up to the tent flap, keeping most of his body concealed as he looked out. Atash's men had mostly completed their preparations; they were posted around the edges of the canopies behind transport crates and overturned desks, rifles aimed out into the night. John spotted bayonet attachments on at least half of the visible weapons. That struck him as odd, unless they were expecting a Bedouin raid; most militant groups and the Syrian Army used ranged weaponry and tactics, rarely closing to melee range unless they were clearing neighbourhoods. "Looks like they're expecting hand-to-hand. Keep that knife you nicked handy."

Five minutes passed, then ten, and by the time fifteen minutes had gone by, John was positively jittering in place, wondering when the hell _anything _was going to happen. That was when the howling resumed and redoubled, multiple voices joining the first from all directions. Several of Atash's men jumped or cursed; two or three bounded over the makeshift barriers and sprinted out, weapons held at the ready.

John's patience for the walls of the tent gave out. "We're getting out of this thing," he growled, grabbing Sherlock by the wrist. He tugged the detective behind him as he ducked through the tent flap. "Thing's a death trap during a raid." He crouched behind two plastic computer crates, peered over the tops, and then nimbly scooted across a makeshift office space to tuck himself under a desk. Sherlock was quick to follow, but folding his long limbs under the desk was frustrating.

The chorus of howling stopped abruptly; there was a shriek and the _pop!_ of a handgun firing followed by a wet yelp that was cut off suddenly and sharply. Several more pops and a sudden roar were audible, followed by the sounds of heavy, too-swift footfalls... galloping, and then they struck.

It seemed to Sherlock that, in the following five minutes, time was playing tricks with his perceptions, speeding up and slowing down, data strobing like watching an old animation reel where you could see the frames flipping past and the spaces between.

There was a tremendous tearing sound first as a canopy and its aluminum frame were ripped away as if grabbed from above, then screams and gunfire and guttural roars and snarls (someone was wailing, ghazwa, dhi'ib ghazwa). There were whirlwinds of motion, blurs of khaki and black and grey and too-bright crimson (one of the men from the white room staggered by, his chest rent by parallel cuts that were soaking the remains of his shirt). The whining sound of bullets flying was everywhere overhead, a swarm of metal hornets overturned. The hot salty-coppery scent of blood and the smoky-sweet stink of gunpowder and the dank odor of death splashed on the disturbed air, and things that simply made no sense slipped in and out of vision (a tangle of cloth and dark hair tumbled by, too much hair, fur? Light glinting on the tips of curved knives in the hair, it passed out of the dim light and there was a grinding snap and a bubbling exhalation). And then there was John, pressing him to the ground and covering him bodily, breathing hard and telling him to stay down, stay down, don't fucking move, and then he was exploding away into the open, scooping up a fallen assault rifle and firing over Sherlock and the desk.

That was when time suddenly seemed to stop as a great black _beast_ emerged from the night behind John, moving at once like an ape and a tiger, all coiled steel under sleek ebony fur that curled into a thick, lustrous mane about its neck, throat, and upper chest. Pointed, pricked ears and sharp, dark eyes analysed John and Sherlock in seconds, calculating odds of resistance and risk levels with an intelligence that was uncanny to see on the distinctly lupine face. Its gaze was undecided on John, who was very clearly armed and dangerous. When it looked at Sherlock, its gaze went dark, then positively, gleefully, very knowingly _murderous_. For just a moment, it was as if he was staring down Jim Moriarty with enormous teeth and claws, and Moriarty really had been dangerous enough as a man—this was some sort of enormous wolf-thing with teeth the size of Sherlock's thumbs that was very clearly contemplating killing, mauling, and eating him, most likely _not_ in that order... "John? John, a little help?"

John was not in sight. "Oh, _bugger,_" Sherlock hissed, just as the beast pounced, _dear God how was something so big so FAST-_

– but John was faster, John was lightning itself, dropping out of seemingly nowhere and bowling the creature over with a snarl as frightening as any that Sherlock had heard that night. Man and beast rolled and tussled and roared, claws and black fur thrashing as John struggled to land a strong grip on the thing's greyhound-sleek fur. The beast grabbed John's shirt and tore him away, tossing him aside like so much rubbish before turning back to Sherlock. For his part, Sherlock had gotten out from under the desk and was in a defensive crouch, knife held before him in a vain attempt to deter a charge. The beast made a sound eerily like a chuckle and pounced.

Well, it tried to pounce. John had both hands on the thing's tail, grinning like a madman as he hauled it backwards and swept its hind legs out from under it. Thwarted and furious, the creature tried to reach back to grab John, but the reaching arm was quickly grasped and used as leverage for John to twist and pin his way up the creature's back. "Not so clever now, are we?!" John growled as he forced the beast to the ground with his knee and the thing's own captured arm.

Gasping with the effort but still grinning ear to ear, John pinned the beast into a wrenching shoulder lock (how did its arms move that way, that was not normal for an animal), narrowly avoided a bite to the forearm as it snaked its head around its free side and gnashed at him, and with a quick, decisive thrust of the bayonet attachment in his free hand, drove the blade through its right shoulder.

The beast screamed, wrenching free of the lock and tossing John aside as it grasped at the blade and pulled it free. It rounded on John, blade in hand (and it was definitely a hand, the dewclaw was a functional, opposable thumb), lips curled forward and teeth bared. John scrambled to his feet and leapt aside as the beast lunged. "Sherlock! Your knife!" he hissed, running over as the beast struggled to extricate itself from the rat's nest of wiring it had plunged into. As soon as he had the knife, John wasted no time leaping on top of the beast and plunging the knife into its uninjured shoulder. It shrieked again, flailing and then flopping to the ground ungracefully as John did something with the knife that involved a twist, a vicious jerk, and an unpleasant, hollow pop.

The thing managed to throw John before he could line up a killing stroke. Ripping away the wires with its one good arm, the beast bolted away into the night, not bothering to look back even once as it fled. Quiet suddenly reigned over the ruins of the camp; John pulled himself to his feet and shook the blood from his knife hand, glancing around as he wiped the blade on his jeans. "Any of you want what he got, then?" he asked, his voice low and threatening.

Sherlock noticed them then—at least five of the furred creatures were standing on their hind legs and staring at John in total silence, as if they had been watching a boxing match or a duel. The largest of the group, the one with a silvered muzzle and streaks of white in its mane, locked gazes with John and Sherlock briefly. Sherlock got a sense of intelligence, but it was little more than the awareness of a smart dog; the escaped beast had been far more _aware_, even _malicious_, as it had examined them. He could see the silvery creature wavering between aggression and caution as it lifted its snout to sniff at John warily.

With a very final snort and toss of its head, the silvered beast came to a conclusion and dropped to all fours. It watched John as it moved out of the camp in a clear 'I am retreating but not cowed' posture, evidently seeing the compact, sandy-haired human as more trouble than it was worth. Moving as a unit, the other four beasts dropped quietly to their feet and melted away into the night.

John took Sherlock by the arm and gently tugged him back to the tent. He cut the LED cluster loose and threw it into a corner, dropping the tent into darkness. Sherlock could hear him pulling his jumper and his shirt off, throwing them into the same corner. "Stay here. I'm going to see if there's any spare clothing."

Staying seemed like a fine plan to Sherlock. He pulled his knees tight to his chest and hugged them there, rocking back and forth in an attempt to calm himself. His mind was absolutely a wreck after that blatant violation of all things predictable and known—what the hell had just happened? Had it all been some sort of dream? He pinched himself, frowned at the pain. Could one feel pain in dreams, then? That was the only reasonable explanation, because there was simply no way that those wolf-like monstrosities could exist. It was nonsense, utter nonsense! He buried his hands in his hair, tried to think of any sane, logical explanation for it, but he couldn't see anything but black fur and black eyes and flashing teeth and claws, couldn't hear anything but the guttural snarls, the howls, the gunfire...

John returned with clothes, a torch, four three-litre canisters of water, and two bedrolls. He wasn't surprised to find Sherlock tucked into a corner of the tent, curled up on himself and staring vacantly over the tops of his knees. He was surprised, however, to see that the man's eyes were red-rimmed and fresh tracks of tears shone on his cheeks. "Sherlock?"

"My heart rate is elevated and it won't go down," Sherlock responded, his tone flat and low. After a moment, he looked up at John with wide, wide eyes. "John, what was that?"

Oh, but it hurt to see Sherlock reduced to confusion and quiet. John hated that, the lost-ness and vulnerability of shock. As much as some part of him wanted Sherlock to understand it (spend three days stuck in it), the greater part of him, the healer in him, wished he could just lift it from the detective's mind. "I wish I knew, Sherlock," John sighed as he spread out one of the pilfered bedrolls. "I wish I knew." He placed a pile of carefully-folded clothing next to Sherlock, then set down a similar pile for himself. He gently, gently herded Sherlock onto the bedroll and draped the other one about his shoulders. "Just... don't think about it for now. Think... think of Baker Street, or the skull, or your favourite violin concerto. Try to rest."

"I went to a concert last month—Norman Neruda," murmured the detective, pulling the bedroll about himself. "She was... splendid, really, in attack and in bowing. She played a lovely little Chopin piece... John, it was magnificent."

"Do you remember it? I've not heard a lot of Chopin."

Sherlock began to hum softly, closing his eyes and nuzzling into the bedroll. John sat down in the tent door and slowly, methodically cleaned the borrowed M16 he had left there. He knew too well that he would not be sleeping tonight, no matter how tired he was. Eventually Sherlock's humming trailed off into the soft, tidal breathing of sleep, but John remained awake and alert, the sounds of long-ago battles still ringing too loudly in his mind.

* * *

Whew. Not sure when the next chapter will be up; real life has a lot in store for mid-August, things like move-ins and Dad's seventieth and conventions. I'm thoroughly enjoying writing this thus far, though, and I hope you are enjoying the reading! Any Americanisms are entirely my fault, by the way. This is unbeta-ed and un-Brit-picked.


	5. Chapter 5

So real life popped by and took a baseball bat to my writing schedule. I'm totally okay with getting to use the big .4m telescope for my astro course, but the rest of it can just... go away, or something. I've never had so many teachers who insist on so much busy work with little to no educational value. This is university, not middle school! Oy.

Enough about me. Have some story. No particular warnings for this chapter that I can think of, maybe a bit of angst-ish stuff? Any Americanisms, inconsistencies, or factual errors are entirely my fault.

* * *

John sat at the top of a rocky outcrop, scratching absently at his arm and the bandaging on his shoulder; the tent and the remains of the camp lay below and before him, quiet and eerie in the early morning sunlight. Beyond that, the desert scrub rolled in low, worn not-quite-slopes, broken occasionally by another weathered outcrop. In the distance, sunlight reflected and glittered from the windows of a small village.

He'd been sitting on the outcrop for a good two or three hours already. Even after the adrenaline crash, he'd been unable to sleep (no thanks to worries, his shoulders, and damn sand and grit making him itch everywhere). He knew that more than half of Atash's men had been killed, had seen them fall whilst he was firing on the wolf-men, but the bodies were _gone_. There were no drag marks where the men had fallen, merely soft imprints of the backs of large, furry digits or the small crater where a puff of breath escaped a muzzle. The rest of the men... well, there was no way to confirm their fate. No one had returned overnight, no one had radioed in, and there hadn't been anyone in the vans (both of which had been forcibly relieved of their engines) or within a hundred-metre radius of the camp. He and Sherlock were the only ones left.

Chances were that was because of John taking on the big black wolf-man to protect Sherlock; that thing had been looking at him the way John looked at homemade jam, and there was no way John was going to let Sherlock be eaten like some sort of candy. The other five creatures certainly hadn't seemed terribly inclined to test their luck with John, not when their craftiest brother had come out of it with every humeral ligament in one shoulder severed and the other deeply wounded. They had certainly had every opportunity to intervene, but maybe single combat was how wolf-men did things, man-to-beast?

That led to one of the most important questions—honestly? Wolf-men?

The creatures had most definitely been man-shaped wolves (John wasn't quite ready to start calling them werewolves, since he hadn't seen one change into or from human form). What the _hell_ were they, and what were they doing out here? How had they avoided the attention of the media? Why had they attacked the camp, rather than the village? Had the locals fortified because of the attacks, perhaps?

John suspected that a lot of answers would be forthcoming if he and Sherlock talked to someone in the village. It would be a lengthy hike—John estimated that the village was somewhere between ten and twelve kilometres from camp—so they would have to set out fairly early to avoid too much activity in the heat of the day.

Everything was ready; sleepless nights were never unproductive when John knew what needed to be done. A rucksack waited below, packed with ration packets, ammunition, a medical kit, a mess kit, and two blankets. Four two-litre bottles of water and a small spade had been lashed to the rucksack, and the pockets of the bag were filled with anything John might have some use for. A folded tarp, three folding knives, two spools of thin wire, a pocket set of screwdrivers, a small hammer, a ham radio, a pair of two-way radio handsets, a box of matches... it was good that they had remained in the camp. John generally didn't enjoy scavenging the belongings of the dead, but these particular dead had kidnapped them and John supposed that requisitioning their things made everything even.

Another bag, set aside for Sherlock, contained two laptops, the headset from the radio, and all of the flash drives and compact disks John had found during his thorough overturning of the campsite. He had disconnected the two desktop computers and left them next to the electronics bag with a set of screwdrivers in a box, knowing that Sherlock would want whatever was on the hard drives. He had thought about simply opening them up and getting the hard drives that way, but Sherlock would probably find _something_ catastrophically wrong with John's methods and sulk about all day, and John did not want to hike even one desert kilometre with a stroppy consulting detective. So, the computers had remained intact.

As for the detective himself, well, John had checked in not too long ago to find him taking up the entirety of the bedroll like some sort of starfish, soundly asleep. Tiptoeing around the splayed limbs, John had gathered the borrowed clothing he'd picked for himself and then carefully escaped to change.

The linens were comfortable and not too cold, even up on the outcrop where the morning winds were strong. John had always enjoyed local clothing, especially the practical and roomy _shalwar _trousers and _kameez_ tunics. The things he had found to wear were nothing fancy compared to some of the outfits he'd seen dignitaries and clerics wearing in Afghanistan, but the cloth was just the right shade of pale, sandy gold to blend in with the surroundings. Even if they weren't in Taliban or Qaeda territory, he felt considerably more at ease knowing that he had a bit of camouflage, especially when Sherlock was new to the desert and John's bitten shoulder was giving him more trouble than the shot one.

Thinking of the bite led John to wonder what had become of Atash after... whatever that had been last night. Bloody wolf-things, tearing apart a thirteen-man, armed, defended camp like it was a child's blanket fort, then making off with every last body in the place! They must have needed more than just six of the creatures to do all of that; though John hadn't seen any others standing up after the fight with the big one, that was hardly a reliable count.

"Woolgathering?"

John yelped and scrambled to his feet, grabbing for the Browning that wasn't at his back. He glared daggers at Sherlock, who merely stood with a small, smug smile on his face and let his eyes do the laughing. They were a strange golden-grey in the morning sun, which annoyed John even more because they were so distracting. "I'll shear your wooly head for a sweater if you sneak up on me like that again," he growled. Sherlock merely offered a sunny smile (alarming, that) and stepped up to stand beside John.

"It seems we aren't too far distant from civilisation... at least, something more civilised than here. How long do you estimate the walk to be?"

"Two, maybe three hours? It's farther away than it looks." John looked Sherlock up and down appraisingly, taking in his bright red _shalwar_ and stark white _kameez_ with no small amount of amusement. "Going to flag down the whole village with that getup, are you?"

Sherlock folded his arms over his chest and glared. "You provided me with several options, and these were the most comfortable. I prefer silk to linen. Furthermore, the higher thread count provides better protection from the sun."

John could understand that last sentiment. Sherlock's skin was just a shade shy of alabaster, a decidedly unfortunate thing when the relentless desert sun was involved. His situation was not helped by the fact that virtually no one but Western soldiers and diplomats kept any sort of sunblock in most rural areas in the Middle East. "We'll have to find you a proper _keffiyeh_, I suppose, and the cord to keep it on." John hadn't seen any in the camp, but he hadn't exactly been clothes shopping at the time. "Come on, let's go take a look."

* * *

Count on Sherlock to be some sort of Byronic incarnation of T.E. Lawrence; he had allowed John to fumble and fuss with the found _keffiyeh_ for some time before taking it and putting it on as if he'd been born to it. He adjusted it a bit and plucked at a loose thread. "Not as stifling as I had expected," mused the detective. "Pleasant, even."

"Well, a lot of people wear them out here, so I suppose they'd be comfortable even in the heat." John had found another and was attempting to mimic Sherlock's casual turn and flip of the cloth over his head. It wasn't going very well.

Sherlock was peering into the screen of one of the desktop monitors and fiddling with the headdress. "This could well be another option for a disguise. Check in the van—see if they brought my things."

John sighed and tied the _keffiyeh_ around his neck the way he'd seen young Afghani men do. Trotting to the van that he and Sherlock had been in, he began systematically emptying the thing until he turned up the little black leather satchel. He found it tucked under the passenger seat with half of its contents spilled over the floor. Nothing seemed damaged, but it took a bit to fish some of the smaller compacts and tubes from under the seat. "I hope you don't plan on primping for an hour before we go; you'll sweat half of this stuff off before we even get to the village."

A waiting, pale hand accepted the bag; Sherlock set it on the ground next to the computers and sat down with a huff. "I do not 'primp', John. Furthermore, unless the village is actually some sort of Salafist outpost, I should not have immediate need of a disguise. Even if our pursuers managed to track us to Beirut, our abduction has almost certainly thrown them off."

Depending on who exactly those pursuers were, John thought, 'almost certainly' wasn't very certain, but he left that unspoken for the time being. Sherlock knew a bit more about dodging assassins and tails, most likely, having spent three years taking down Moriarty's network (without John's help, damn him), so John decided to leave those plans to the detective. John would handle the medical, survival, and combat aspects of this whole mess and leave the deception and intrigue parts to the detective.

Well, most of the deception and intrigue. "We're not splitting up to throw them off further, Sherlock."

Sherlock paused in his inspection of the two desktop computer casings to give John a perplexed, slightly annoyed look. "Obviously. You're useful in this setting." He paused, tilted his head. John let him think on the off chance that he was actually considering what he'd just said, but when no clarification or apology was forthcoming, he tossed his hands up in the air with a huff of indignation.

"Useful. I keep you from becoming some giant fucking wolf-thing's sodding _midnight snack_ with my bare hands, and all I get is 'useful in this setting'? That's it?"

"I never said I didn't appreciate you, John, so why are you upset?" Sherlock got to his feet, hands extended with palms out. "I don't understand. Explain this to me."

If the (undoubtedly calculated) placating gesture was any indication, Sherlock was at least making an effort at trying to understand John's frustration. He wouldn't have condescended to use such a pedestrian sort of behaviour otherwise. John sighed, took a deep breath, and counted to ten. Much as he would love to shout and rail at the detective for being obtuse, abrasive, and ungrateful over and over again over the years (especially the three where he was NOT DEAD), Sherlock simply didn't get those sorts of things. It wasn't malice or intentional thoughtlessness—John had to remember that. Shouting at him would be a little like scolding a dog for failing to speak English. He'd have to just... be honest, then, if he wanted to make his point. "I... you say 'useful in this setting' and I hear 'not useful in others, will leave when that happens'."

"I never said that, either."

John sighed again. "No, but... some people look for the small print."

That was met with a blank look.

"Small print. A second layer of meaning. Subtext, implications. Unspoken ifs and buts. Assumptions not necessarily derived from what was said, but from what has been done in the past, even if it wasn't the speaker that did it."

It was visible when it clicked in Sherlock's brain. "Oh. Trust issues."

"Yes," John grated out—god did he hate that phrase. "You let me think you were dead for three years. What's to stop you from running off again?"

Sherlock furrowed his brow. "John, I've explained this to you. Must I go through it again? Had I not died convincingly, you would have been killed."

"Not sure if I'd call it living, Sherlock." After six months in a depression so deep he did little more than eat, sleep, work, and breathe on autopilot, the next two and a half years had been spent in a miserable, seemingly inescapable state of 'stuck'. Everything and everyone was boring, irritating, or irrelevant. Work was tedium at its worst. Lestrade banned him from helping at crime scenes after he'd broken Anderson's jaw. Girlfriends never lasted long, saying he was too distant and distracted. It didn't help that his libido had hit rock bottom; even the one night stands had been failures. Eventually John had given up on trying to move on and live like a normal bloke. He worked, went for long walks around the city, people-watched, worked out until he was so tired he couldn't feel his legs, sometimes ate, sometimes slept, and sort of lived in a half-awake muddle. If he hadn't been so hurt and furious when Sherlock showed up one day on his doorstep, he would have fallen to his knees and cried into his great stupid coat with gratitude for sweeping away the monotonous future that had seemed so inevitable before.

Sherlock seemed to read a bit of what John was thinking about in the few seconds that passed. He looked back down at the computer and began to extricate the hard drive. "I... may have miscalculated how you would manage the loss." He tucked the complicated-looking component into the rucksack and shoved aside the rest of the computer. "Emotions are not logical or rational. I am at a disadvantage when trying to understand them."

"Well, _obviously_." That earned John a glare that could melt steel, but he was made of tougher stuff and gave Sherlock a glare of his own. "Just don't leave again, right? If this whole mess leads up to another faked death as an escape, you're letting me in on the entire sodding plan and _I am dying with you._"

Sherlock held John's gaze for a long time. His eyes (which were now a green-tinged cloud grey like pale Chinese jade) flicked from place to place over John's face, picking up the minutiae of his thoughts and intents. John wasn't trying to hide anything, so there was probably quite a bit to pick up on.

Suddenly, Sherlock turned and went back to dismantling the remaining computer. "As you wish, John," he rumbled, deftly prising the side panel away with the help of a screwdriver. "I will include you, but you will learn to keep up when we return to a more urban environment."

John decided to pretend not to notice the barely-there undertone of contrition in the detective's voice. "Keep me fully briefed and I'll keep up," he said instead, standing at ease to watch Sherlock work. "I did a little more with the Army than just stitch people up, after all."

Sherlock finished with the second computer and shouldered his pack. He stood and readjusted the weight with a long-suffering sigh. "Ugh. I thought I was finished with this pack-mule nonsense once I left uni." He scowled when John couldn't hold in a chuckle. "Laugh all you like; the most I am accustomed to being burdened with is my disguise kit and perhaps a pistol. The Work demands that I remain unhampered by excess weight." This only made John giggle more. Rolling his eyes, Sherlock oriented himself toward the little village and proceeded to stomp out of the camp. John followed a few steps behind, still giggling away as he swung his pack onto his shoulders with practised ease.

* * *

Compared to some of the steep, stony mountain paths John had patrolled, the hike to the village was a leisurely stroll on level pavement. It had been quite some time since he'd hauled thirty to fifty pounds of supplies on foot, but he'd hardly let himself go, even during the bad years. His leg wasn't any worse than usual, and his left shoulder was surprisingly quiescent for all the strain it was taking. His right, the bitten one, felt like it had fallen asleep, and his skin felt too dry, but he was otherwise all right. He wasn't dehydrated—he was always fastidious about his hydration—and he had the _keffiyeh_ shielding his eyes from the sun.

Everything was about as ship-shape as it could be. Why, then, did he feel as if he'd been tossed down a flight of stairs? And why was he breaking out in hives? And why were his eyes so sensitive to the sun? He'd not been exposed to anything at the clinic with all those symptoms, at least not that he could remember.

Sherlock had noticed the hives first, about an hour into their hike. After looking them over, he'd displayed a similar rash on his own arms. "It's quite normal for me," he had explained calmly. "Whenever I am exposed to strong sun for the first time in a few months, this happens. I suspect it has to do with a hypersensitivity to compounds in the skin that change structure when exposed to ultraviolet light. Have you ever had it before? Is anything else bothering you?"

He hadn't seemed terribly concerned when John answered in the negative and described the itching and the aches, but when an hour passed and John's symptoms continued unabated, John could tell that the detective was feeling more than a little nervous.

"Come _on_, John, we're not that much further away. If we keep up a fast pace, we'll arrive sooner and then you can rest." This was said as Sherlock chivvied John along like some sort of overgrown, gawky hen. John complied with a groan and a half-hearted attempt to swat Sherlock's hands away from his shoulders. Shortly thereafter it was, "Drink your water, John, honestly, I don't want to have to carry you there," whilst Sherlock carefully tipped the bottle to John's lips. For his part, John steadily put up less and less of a fuss as he focused more and more on continuing the hike. Really, it would be wonderful to take a nap if his wittering tit of a flatmate would just let him lie down for a bit...

John was leaning heavily on Sherlock when they finally made it to the village proper. He faintly recognised the word for 'school' written on a whitewashed signboard, felt a nice wash of cool air roll over him. Ah, here was the place for a nap! Air conditioning was wonderful. He heard a chorus of surprised, young voices, and felt soft, deft hands help Sherlock ease him down to the floor. Yes, a nap would be excellent. Hopefully the teacher and the class wouldn't mind...

* * *

Hurrah for sudden onset of illness. Seriously the worst thing ever when you're in the middle of something, like final exams. Or running away from bad guys. That too, though I haven't had personal experience with that (thank goodness).

Hope you're enjoying the tale thus far. :)


	6. Chapter 6

And here we are with the sixth chapter of this mess. Hopefully it's a fun mess, at least. I'm enjoying the writing part. Anyway, no particular warnings for this chapter, unless you're bothered by cursing. John does a lot of that.

* * *

Sherlock's deep baritone was what brought John out of sleep; when he realised that he had been sleeping in the first place, he started awake with a yelp.

As it turned out, the startling was a really, really terrible idea. The yelp turned into a groan as John sank back into the bed, trying to block out the aching that seemed to be coming from every joint in his body. His skin felt like he'd spent a day rolling in thistles, and there was some sort of smell that was making his stomach do all sorts of horrible things... "_Fuck,_" he hissed into the pillow, gritting his teeth. This was _not_ his trip, was it?

"How are you feeling, John?" Sherlock asked from somewhere nearby. John heard cloth shifting and soft footsteps a few metres to his right. Opening his eyes, he saw Sherlock seated in a wicker chair next to the bed before he had to clamp his eyes shut again—everything was far, far too bright.

"Like murder," John groaned, trying to make himself comfortable on the bed when all he wanted to do was peel right out of his own skin. "Itches everywhere, aches everywhere. Something over that way smells like death warmed over." He made a vague gesture toward his feet. "'S too bright. Close the blinds. Where are we?"

"You're in my house, but that much was obvious," a female voice, delicately enunciated and musical but slightly American-accented, offered from somewhere near his feet. "We're on the outskirts of Sadad, a little village in the same district as Homs." The woman made a displeased noise. "The stink is because the cat appears to have left a present under the bed about three days ago."

Despite the aches and itches and general misery, John levered himself into a sitting position. He felt Sherlock's hands doing an awkward hover over his shoulders, half-touching as if he feared John might break. "Sherlock, I'm itchy, not made of glass. For god's sake stop fluttering." He tried opening his eyes again and groaned. "Jesus it's bright. You sure we're inside?"

John managed to suppress a flinch as someone (not Sherlock, he smelled like London fog, various chemicals, and pipe smoke, this person smelled like cardamom and fresh bread) put a pair of glasses on him. When he opened his eyes again, he was pleased to discover that they were sunglasses and the room was no longer bright enough to cause pain.

The first thing John noticed was that Sherlock was watching him the way he watched some of his more volatile or vital experiments—that is, he looked _worried_. Standing next to him was a slightly plump woman with a long braid and grey eyes just a shade darker than the detective's. She didn't seem worried at all, just patient and maybe even a shade amused. "The sunglasses always help, I've found. As you can see, the blinds are already quite shut."

Sure enough, they were—the too-bright light was all the work of perfectly normal incandescent bulbs. "Tell me this isn't meningitis," John groaned. "Sherlock, why did you have to take that sodding flash thing, this adventure has been a disaster. I wanted to see Beirut, not get kidnapped and harassed by my ex, attacked by wolf-men, and then sick with God knows what sort of viral whatever this is..."

"Oh, it's viral all right, but it's not meningitis, nothing to worry about. Who bit you?" the woman chirped, interrupting John's train of complaint. "It's important to know, you see, because if it was who I think it was, you're lucky, but if it wasn't, well, I hope you've a good basement."

Sherlock looked uncomfortable when John glared at him for answers. The woman merely smiled. "What do you mean, basement? And who are you? No one ever tells me their name before they go rattling on at me." Sherlock looked less uncomfortable when he caught on to the joke, but still not quite settled.

The woman held out a hand. "Drake Pulliam, schoolteacher and whelp-wrangler. Sherlock tells me you're... John, was it?"

John shook her hand tentatively, surprised at her grip. "Er, yes, John Watson, uh, doctor." Count on Sherlock to find the one weird American in Syria. "Why are you in Syria, Miss Pulliam?"

She shrugged. "Duty called. America's boring anyway. Also call me Drake, Miss Pulliam sounds so _stuffy_. So, basement, yes, you'll want one when you go home. Changes can get messy if you're not one of the lucid ones, and I think there's maybe three or four of us last I counted, but Atash has been—"

"You know Atash?"

Drake seemed surprised. "Most of us do. His territory is just over the border into Lebanon. He raids the local pack constantly, not to mention the village."

John took a deep breath. He shuffled back on the bed until he could lean against the wall; sitting up was surprisingly exhausting. "All right, all right, slow down. Territory? Raids, packs, turning? Changes, lucid ones? You've utterly lost me. What the hell are you talking about? And will someone bring me water? I'm parched."

Sherlock sprang up and bolted through a nearby door. Drake chuckled. "Poor kid. Right, start at the start." She put her hands on John's shoulders and held his gaze. "Bear with me here. John, you've been bitten by a werewolf and you're into the first symptomatic phase of the disease."

John was caught between laughing out loud and curling up into a ball. When Drake continued to look as serious as ever, he began to lean more towards the curling up feeling. "You mean... those really were..."

"Werewolves," Drake supplied, nodding. "Those were werewolves, for all intents and purposes." She sat down in the chair Sherlock had abandoned and rested her chin on one palm. "We'd picked up on Atash's guys on the ham set in the town hall, so we knew he was in the area and would probably provoke a raid. Atash is the alpha of a pack that's been rival to our local one for the past four months or so. He's one of maybe four lucid werewolves that I know of—the rest of them are totally feral when they change."

John thought about the things he'd seen last night (or was it the other night? He'd lost track of time). Except for that big black one, the rest of the werewolves had essentially been unusually smart animals. The big black one had been _smart..._ and Atash was apparently one of the 'lucid'... "Oh god," he breathed suddenly, clapping his hands to his face. "Fuck! I think I mauled him last night. Or the other night. When they attacked. He went after Sherlock and I nearly cut his shoulder out. Jesus, he's never gonna... oh Jesus buggering _fuck!_ The bastard bit me! He bit me! Does that mean I'm going to turn into a fucking wolf-thing?! Oh, damn this adventure, I did not sign on for this...!"

Drake sat patiently, weathering John's cursing, bed-punching, sheet-wringing, ranting, and panicking with quiet amusement. Sherlock stood by awkwardly with a glass of water and a straw, glancing between his very distressed flatmate and his purloined chair as if unsure of which problem to attempt to solve first. When John's pillow was launched across the room with considerable violence, he decided that reclaiming his chair would probably be the safer option. Drake ignored the detective's nudges and elbows until John started to wind down, whereupon she stood and sat on the edge of the bed as if it had been her idea all along.

Eventually, John had to stop and just breathe for a bit. When Sherlock held out the glass, he took it in both hands so the shaking wouldn't spill it. "Thank you."

Drake took the glass from Sherlock when John returned it half-drained. "You don't want to share that with him, kiddo. First things first—unless you're interested in catching this thing, Sherlock, consider it roughly on par with mononucleosis. It's catchy as fuck." She sipped demurely from the glass. "On the other hand, if you're interested or already infected, like myself, sharing is caring. John, how long ago were you bitten?"

John accepted the glass again and took a deep quaff. God bless cold water! "It was about... what's today? He bit me on a Thursday."

That drew a chuckle from Drake. "No one gets the hang of Thursdays. Anyways, you're right on schedule. At least, right on the accelerated one. Usually it's between ten and thirty days after the bite that this first phase starts, but extreme stress of some sort can jump-start things onto a different timetable. Sherlock kept track of your symptoms—you started aching about ten hours ago, according to him, so the itching, aching, and fever should let up in ten to twenty hours."

If John felt just a little freaked out by all this talk of symptoms and timetables and phases, well, even if he was a doctor it was perfectly all right to be freaked out by werewolf disease. "And after that...?"

"Steak," Drake said with a positively carnivorous grin. "Lots and lots of steak. Also milk. Unkosher as fuck, I know, but it's necessary. You'll want to run, too, run _forever_, and climb on _all of the things_. All of them, I kid you not. That'll last five days to a week. After that, you'll have your first Change."

Sherlock, who had been uncharacteristically quiet during most of the conversation, spoke up then. "I've decided that we will remain here for the duration. Drake and her husband are experienced in dealing with this; they are both 'lucid Turned', as they call it." He brought his knees up, tucking his heels onto the chair's narrow seat and his arms about his legs. "I cannot be trusted to care for you properly, not when I know so little about this." The tone of his last statement was somewhere between petulance and guilt.

John sighed and lowered himself to the bed again. He really had no idea how he felt about this thing happening to him—granted, he didn't have a great deal of choice in the matter—and suspected he really wouldn't have much of an idea about it until he actually changed... or Changed, since Drake kept saying it with that emphasis. He was definitely annoyed, definitely a bit scared, but it hadn't quite hit him yet, really, because he was really more interested in sleeping than anything. "Sherlock, normally I'd have a problem with you being arbitrary like that, but I'm too tired to really care right now. Come back when I wake up so I can..." John stifled a yawn, "... shout at you."

Sherlock offered a hesitant smile over the tops of his knees. When John seemed to have settled into sleep, he eased the sunglasses from his friend's face and set them next to his elbow. "You said Atash was a lucid Turned?"

Drake nodded. "He and I were turned by the same person. Atash was high-strung, a bit unstable, so he hit the accelerated timetable whereas I had the typical progression. I was able to document the phases between the two of us, and then when I was called to treat a couple of teenagers that got themselves bitten on a 'hike'. They followed the longer progression and weren't lucid when they Changed, though they were more docile than I expected.

"I asked my husband to take a few blood samples with him when he went to Paris for a week—he ran a few tests and found two strains of the same virus, one in my and Atash's samples, one in the samples from the lovebirds. So far as we can tell, the lucidity is a trait of a recent mutation, so we refer to it as the beta-strain. The earliest alpha victims we've found have been borderline berserk; most are dead by now, so we're lucky we got samples while we did. Less-aggressive individuals were better able to sneak in before anyone heard or spotted them, and less likely to kill outright. Crafty alpha-strain lycanthropes tend to be the big infection culprits now, especially the ones that subdue with a bite to the ankle, knee, or hip."

Sherlock looked down at John, who was scratching at his cheek in his sleep. "You're sure that Atash is lucid?" John would be devastated if he could not control himself in his Changed form. Sherlock had seen his face after the attack; he'd not been in shock, but the association had been made and cemented—wolf-men were a threat, dangerous, Very Not Good. John worried about losing control of himself and hurting people; he had a temper, slow though it was. This would make that a thousand times worse. "John will be lucid?"

"I'm certain. I have the tests to prove it. Sherlock, Atash has never been quite stable, even before he was Turned. He was always possessive and bitter, and if what you told me is true, then I suspect he attacked you because he is utterly obsessed with your friend. He's referred back to 'the one he lost' since I first had the misfortune of running into him. Seriously, I feel sorry for John. He's got the ex that wouldn't be out of place as the murderer in a Criminal Minds episode." She shuddered. "Anyway. John will be lucid. Trust me on that one."

Sherlock would not be reassured until he had proof that John had the beta-strain of this 'lycanthropy' virus. John had a ridiculously misguided self-sacrificial streak, and if he felt that he was somehow Not Good for Sherlock or anyone else, he would distance himself. Sherlock didn't want that, not one bit—maybe splitting up to hide had been an option before (even after John had shouted at him, he was secretly ashamed to admit), but now it was well on its way to 'permanent deletion'. "You say your husband ran these tests?"

Drake nodded. "He ran the initial stuff in Paris. Later, we both ran them at the hospital lab in Damascus."

Sherlock steepled his fingers, mind already building, playing out, saving, and discarding a myriad of possible plans of action. "Given the crackdown you mentioned, Damascus is out of reach until later. If some of the hardware in your cupboards was any indication, however, I suspect we may be able to cobble together a workable if simple laboratory here, provided you have a generator, a soldering iron, and a few appliances you'd be willing to part with..."

* * *

Stand back, Drake. Sherlock is going to attempt to MacGyver a biology lab in your kitchen.

I've got this whole bloody lycanthropy virus progression written out; it was lots of fun to write up and research. Viruses are seriously some of the weirdest things on Earth.


	7. Chapter 7

I am so, so sorry this took so long. Real life came crashing down around my ears like a stellar mass of bricks.

Warnings for arguments, angst, brief recollections of torture and non-con, and recollections of depression and PTSD. None of it is very graphic or in-depth, but it's best to be careful if you know you're sensitive to any of the above.

* * *

John awakened slowly, drifting up and out of a blessedly dreamless sleep to the faint, lilting sound of a woman singing as she did the wash. He had to take his time sitting up, as he was still sore and a bit stiff, but the sunlight spilling through the windows was only a bit annoying and his skin merely felt a bit dry. He rubbed absently at his left shoulder, then his right, tracing his scars with his fingertips. A rosy, starburst-shaped crater bisected by an incision line as long as his palm was wide dominated the skin beneath his left clavicle; the entire scar was slightly raised, almost as if it had been embossed on his skin. The pair of beaded crescents of new skin that were the bite marks Atash had delivered three days ago were still silvery and flat but just as visible. John shivered, wishing that he did not have to carry such a reminder for the rest of his life. The bullet wound was impersonal... the bite was not.

The whole thing still sounded like something out of a bad young adult novel—protagonist kidnapped and bitten by crazed ex-lover-turned-contagious-werewolf during adventure in the desert! He buried his face in his hands and tried to quell the rising sense of panic that had been building somewhere just under his sternum. This wasn't the end of the world; sure, he had the same thing, now, but it wasn't as bad as having some other transmissible disease... right?

_'Catchy as fuck,'_ Drake had said as she'd kept John's glass from Sherlock. _'On par with mononucleosis.'_

Well, there went his sex life. John hoped Atash was miserable, wherever he was; this wasn't a disease, it was a _curse_.

"John, I can hear you depressing yourself from here." Sherlock's tone was dry and knowing. "Get out of your head before you hurt yourself. Come eat- you whinge insufferably when you miss meals and I am not in an angst-tolerant sort of mood."

John let himself be distracted by Sherlock wrapping sensitivity in an insult. He really didn't want to think about Atash or coping with a contagious, as-of-yet-incurable disease for the rest of his life just yet. "Says the man that complains by shooting walls," he riposted companionably. Stretching out the last of the stiffness and aches, John took a deep breath and smiled at the savoury, spicy, smoky scent of cooking shawarma. "Tell me I'm smelling shawarma for breakfast."

"The shawarma's for dinner," a new voice, one with a very slight American accent in a slightly lower baritone than Sherlock's, answered. "We have beef pastirma wraps in the fridge, if you want lunch. It's almost noon."

Thinking wistfully of the wonders of shawarma, kebab, qorma, and a great many other Central Asian dishes, John threw on his _kameez_ and gave his hair a cursory patting-down before wandering out of the room he'd been put up in. Whatever pastirma was, he was willing to give it a try.

The house reminded John of some of the places he'd inspected while on patrol in Afghanistan, little places made mostly of whitewashed brick and concrete that were somewhere between snug and too snug. There were rarely more than four rooms in most of the rural Afghani homes John had seen; from what he could see, this house was built on a similar plan. John needed only to duck through the silk hanging in the bedroom door and trot down a short corridor to find Sherlock and a tall man (John presumed this was Mr Pulliam) seated at a table beneath the lone window in a cluttered yet cosy kitchen, engrossed in a game of chess.

Sherlock was wearing his 'this is unexpected' face; the likely Mr Pulliam, a lanky, freckled man with a full head of rich auburn ringlets, was looking amused. "John, he's winning," Sherlock said without looking up, as if he expected John to somehow fix or explain that fact. He started to move a knight (his last one) but quickly changed his mind. He steepled his fingers and scowled at the board.

John enjoyed chess. At least, he enjoyed it so long as Sherlock was not his opponent. He'd given it up as a hopeless endeavour after the tenth consecutive flattening. "About time someone challenged you." If Sherlock was looking for pity, John had none to offer. Abandoning the detective to a much-needed lesson in humility, John grabbed one of the wraps from the refrigerator and looked around the kitchen a little as he peeled the wax paper from one end.

The fridge and the oven looked like they had been pulled straight out of the 1950s, both in a pastel shade of greenish blue that simply didn't exist on modern appliances (probably for the better, honestly). Two sturdy hardwood tables served as counter space, their surfaces cluttered with all manner of jars, canisters, bottles, and flasks, though most of these were pushed aside to make room for what appeared to be a disemboweled microwave. In said ex-appliance, John immediately recognised a gel electrophoresis apparatus improvised from a rectangular Pyrex dish, paperclips, cannibalised microwave wires, and what looked like actual agar gel. The two columns of strong and weak dark bands in the agar gel looked like they matched, but John was more concerned with the all-too-familiar 'ex-' status of the microwave.

"Sherlock. This looks like your handiwork."

The detective shot John a petulant look of denial in several stages, caught between watching the board and trying to sway John with wide, guileless grey eyes. "She donated it!" he protested, giving a great huff as Pulliam captured one of his pawns. "She only ever used for light bulbs, or at least that's what she said she used it for, and she didn't mind helping me take it apart. The paperclips were her idea, actually."

"Light bulbs?" John echoed as he sat down to watch the game. Even if Sherlock hadn't told him who was winning, John would probably have been able to guess—more than half of Pulliam's pieces were still on the board, and Sherlock had no bishops or rooks. "She used the _microwave_ for _light bulbs_?" Maybe the ex-microwave really had been donated; such a story seemed a little too silly for Sherlock to have concocted, and Pulliam seemed unperturbed by the claim.

Pulliam put Sherlock into check with a pawn. "She demonstrates excitation and expansion of gases with them. I keep telling her just to buy balloons and a halogen lamp, but she never listens. Says the kids like the exploding part too much to deny them the fun." He watched Sherlock glare at the pawn, then looked up at John suddenly and held his hand out over the board. "Right! I'm Alasdair Pulliam, the local alpha. I hope you slept all right? Feeling more like yourself? Drake was starting to worry before she left for school."

John elbowed Sherlock, who was trying to nudge Alasdair's hand away from the board, and shook hands with the redhead. "John Watson. I slept like the dead, thanks, and I do feel better. Did I really sleep that long?"

"Even more excessively than usual. Check." Sherlock's knight threatened Alasdair's king; John had to keep his mouth shut when he noticed that Alasdair had a bishop in line with the knight. Sherlock threw himself back in his chair and slouched when the knight was captured. "This is ridiculous. I should have seen that. John, why didn't you say anything? Do you want me to lose? Are you _trying_ to distract me?"

John took a bite of his wrap (yup, he liked it—Middle Eastern cuisine really was the best) and merely raised his eyebrows. Sherlock sank down in his chair even further, even though his sulk forced him to reach awkwardly to make his next move. The game continued apace, with Alasdair putting Sherlock into check every few moves or so (which had Sherlock sinking lower and lower in his chair, until he had to sit back up in order to see the board properly). Eventually Sherlock was cornered and checkmated, whereupon he was at least gracious enough to shake hands.

Alasdair stood and cleared the board, tucking pieces away into a velvet pouch before placing pouch and board on a shelf next to the window. John goggled as he strode over to the kitchen counter to look at the electrophoresis plate—the man had to be a handspan taller than Sherlock, and Sherlock was tall enough to begin with! He could barely imagine what Alasdair would look like when Changed, though 'big and red' was probably a good starting point.

Apparently having seen all he needed to, Alasdair gave a triumphant 'aha!' and practically danced over to a bookshelf, where he pulled a laptop out from between a book with Hebrew lettering and a leather-bound copy of The Hobbit. "A match! I'll have to enter it in; we haven't seen another beta-strain since Drake tracked me. Tell me again when you were bitten?"

"Thursday between ten and eleven AM," Sherlock supplied before John could even open his mouth to respond. "He'd been itching at it after that, and then sometime between ten and noon yesterday he began to show fatigue, aches, hives, and light sensitivity."

Alasdair entered everything dutifully, balancing the laptop in his right hand while typing with his left. "And it was Atash that he contracted it from?"

If John flinched and wrinkled his nose in distaste at the name, neither Sherlock nor Alasdair gave any sign that they had noticed. "It was Atash," Sherlock confirmed, saving John the trouble yet again. "One bite to the trapezius."

"Was he Changed at the time? I'm assuming it was unsolicited?"

John had taken a bite of his wrap, so when Sherlock gave him an expectant look, he merely kicked the detective's chair. "Lazy, John. Atash wasn't changed, and it was completely unsolicited and unwanted. He had us abducted. He knew John in the past and decided his political statements could wait."

That earned a raised eyebrow. "Political? And where'd he take you from?" Alasdair was doing less typing and more clicking. "How'd you get here?"

At that point, Sherlock gave their host the short version of the adventure (or disaster, or bad young adult novel, or bad horror movie) thus far, to which Alasdair listened very attentively indeed. He was typing again. "So you say this flash drive started all of this?" When the detective and the doctor nodded, Alasdair's brow furrowed thoughtfully. "We heard Atash mention a drive when he radioed out at around ten the other night." The redhead put down in his chair again, tapping away at the laptop. "Did he take it from you?"

"No. Never have I witnessed someone so addled by such pedestrian _sentiment,_" Sherlock said with a truly magnificent sneer and scoff, his disdain so evident it was nearly palpable. John stiffened. He didn't like the direction Sherlock's thoughts were taking, if that tone was any indication. "Twisted, perhaps, but regardless of its state, he was truly incompetent in carrying out his orders, much less any sensible plan, once he remembered just how much he lo-"

"Don't you _dare_! Don't you _dare_ call that _love!_" John snapped, very nearly exploding out of his chair as he slammed his hands on the table. Alasdair flinched, but Sherlock seemed unimpressed.

"And why shouldn't I?" Sherlock retorted without missing a beat. "John, he developed an attachment to you. Love is nothing but a fixation, an obsession. When he tried to share his worldview, his sentiments, with you, the object of his fixation, you rejected it—rejected him **and** everything he chose to be. When an obsessive is denied the thing he 'lo—"

"_Do. Not. Say it,_" John snarled. He was so outraged that he completely missed the furrows his nails were carving into the table. "How could you even call that love, much less sentiment? I told you what he did! I _told_ you and here you are treating it like it was logical, you arrogant son of—"

Suddenly Alasdair was out of his seat. "_Be quiet, both of you._" His voice cut right through John's anger, low and dangerously level. "Sherlock. You will stay here; like it or not, you will listen to what I have to say very, very carefully. John. You are going to go outside while I talk to Sherlock. Follow any trail out of town to find the patrol loop. You will run, walk, wander, _whatever_ until you are calm." When John made to protest, Alasdair met his gaze and held it, jaw clenched and chin raised. "No buts. Go now."

Something told John that obedience was his only good option; Mr Pulliam looked ready to throw him out bodily if he didn't obey immediately. He stalked out of the kitchen, pulled his shoes on, and then very quietly found the front door and let himself out.

Livid with Sherlock and his nonsense but glad that Pulliam was at least lecturing him about it, John set out at a brisk, ground-eating jog that carried him to the edge of town in minutes. From there, he followed a well-worn dirt path until it intersected another, wider path just past a thick copse of scrubby desert trees. It seemed to run parallel to the edge of town like a patrol loop would, so John followed it, focusing only on the landscape, the smells, and the sounds as he tried to clear his mind of nagging, painful memories.

When those memories persisted well into his second lap of the trail, John realised that he might actually have to confront them rather than cram them away in the dark corners of his mind.

If he was honest with himself, John knew that he had never really processed his capture and subsequent torture properly (that is, if there was even a proper way to process such a thing). Yes, he'd explained the whole ordeal to Sherlock in that godforsaken van, but he'd understated things a bit for his own comfort just as much as the detective's. He could face the beatings, the sensory and sleep deprivation, the assault and harassment that Atash subjected him to, the interrogations, and the hundreds of half-inch scalpel cuts that laced his back with scars, but he wasn't so sure he was quite ready to confront some of the emotional scarring.

John had no problem understanding that none of it had been his fault. It was emphatically, utterly, incontrovertibly Atash's fault. What he did have a problem with was getting past the feeling that the damage done by the experience was enough to make _him_ untrustworthy.

Trust was a big thing in John's world. He didn't grant it to just anyone—having grown up in a household with an unpredictable, viciously petty sister and oblivious parents, he'd learned very early on that one should never assume anyone was trustworthy, no matter how 'close' they were. When the pattern of closeness followed by betrayal of trust continued through his schooling and culminated with Atash's deception and assault, John gave up giving people the benefit of the doubt entirely. All of his disdain, however, was predicated on his belief that **he** was a trustworthy person.

After coming perilously close to a panic attack in the middle of a surgery, cowering in a corner when a night raid triggered a flashback to his captivity, and nearly wrenching Bill Murray's shoulder out of socket when he was awakened from a nightmare, John began to wonder if he was safe to be around. Things seemed to spiral downward from there; he was sure that, had he not been invalided by the shot to his shoulder, he would have been discharged due to psychological instability shortly thereafter. Being invalided and rendered psychologically vulnerable only made him feel even more unreliable, and Ella's quiet suspicion always made him feel like his problems with trusting others were somehow illegitimate or symptomatic of being... broken.

Broken. Who trusted a broken man?

As much trouble as John had trusting people, he wanted to be trustworthy and reliable. Even if he never let people get too close, he still wanted them around, and being untrustworthy hardly facilitated that. No one trusted a depressed ex-soldier with an adrenaline addiction, a bad leg, and flashbacks, either; sure, they pitied him, but they gave him a wide berth. Coming back to London hadn't given him a social group, and John had spent many of those early days feeling isolated and useless.

Sherlock had changed all that. He'd looked right past John's apathy and limp—he hadn't assumed anything, mostly because he didn't **need** to assume. He just knew. He knew what John was dealing with and didn't bother with pity or overly sentimental sympathy or distrust. He saw John's strengths and just expected John to be John, nothing more, nothing less.

Why John had decided to trust Sherlock of all people was still beyond him, but he suspected it was because Sherlock seemed to understand him at some level, even if it wasn't an emotional one. It was very possibly because Sherlock was brilliant and mad and seemingly a force of nature. As things went on it was probably because Sherlock led John on mad chases and adventures in the pursuit of criminals, but in the end, John trusted Sherlock because _Sherlock trusted and respected John utterly, both the good and the not-so-good._ John felt needed, useful, and _part_ of something.

Of course, Sherlock had to bollocks it all up when he came back from the Fall. Dealing with a friend's death was one thing; learning that the death had been a ruse so said friend could go faffing off to snip the threads of a massive organised crime network by himself was entirely another thing.

Well, 'faffing' was maybe rather harsh, but John was still fairly angry about the whole thing. Sherlock should have trusted him to be able to help. John hardly needed to be protected like some sort of child or flower; had Sherlock kept him apprised of the situation with Moriarty, John knew he could have been of tremendous help. He'd spent years dealing with urban combat and guerilla warfare, and his medical knowledge was far greater and more practical than Sherlock's. So yes, the sentiment was appreciated, but John really didn't like being protected. It made him feel like people saw him as helpless and untrustworthy even as it made him feel appreciated (which was a lousy duality of feeling, to be sure).

Now John was stuck with yet another permanent, dignity-eroding reminder of the darkest part of his life, was essentially barred from ethically entering a relationship without first telling his prospective partner that he had a contagious, disfiguring disease, might have to give up medicine, and couldn't even really consider himself fully human any longer. If Sherlock wanted to protect John badly enough that he'd fake his own death to do it, couldn't he be arsed to work up a little empathy and **not** imply that Atash's efforts to dehumanise John were logical and motivated by 'love'? Surely Sherlock, who had solved many a case involving crimes of passion, could discern between obsession and love?

John came to a sudden stop when a thought occurred to him. Had Sherlock ever really experienced and recognised love as John understood it? Healthy relationships weren't exactly noticeable compared to unhealthy ones; had Sherlock only ever seen obsession or lust as examples of what happened in a relationship?

Slowly, he resumed his steady lope, mind whirling. Sherlock claimed to be a 'high-functioning sociopath', but John could write a whole essay contradicting that self-diagnosis. Sherlock felt things and cared about (a select few) people, so unless he'd never really experienced love properly, he would only have the results of the Work to judge with. Furthermore, John knew virtually nothing about Sherlock's childhood, other than the facts that he wanted to be a pirate and would routinely pelt Mycroft with his dinner. Had Sherlock's parents been attentive or distant, patient or short-tempered? Did he even have both parents in his life during his childhood? Was there ever a time when Mycroft cared for his brother in healthier, less creepy ways?

School was obviously a loss; Sherlock had undoubtedly ended up isolated for one reason or another. University... well, John suspected that Sherlock's history with drugs had started in university. Whether there had been a healthy, meaningful relationship in any of that was hard to say. Greg Lestrade had forced Sherlock to give up the habit and seemed fond of him, and there was definitely Mrs. Hudson, who clearly adored him, but whether Sherlock understood that it wasn't pity or utility that drove their affection remained to be seen.

Even if Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson's love was more parental in nature, John's affection for the detective was something... something greater, perhaps. John cared so much about the gawky, brilliant idiot it hurt; so much it had nearly killed him after the Fall. He cared enough to put up with and even be a little bit fond of the massive, dramatic strops, the violently purple residue on the wall from the permanganate precipitation experiment in the kitchen sink, the body parts in the fridge, the dog hair in the loo... he cared enough to kill to protect Sherlock, even now, even when he was frustrated and anxious and hurt.

The thing was, did Sherlock see that all of those things were kinds of love? Did Sherlock have _any_ frame of reference on love beyond the crimes of lust and obsession he dealt with? Didn't he see that his willingness to go through with his (stupid) Fall was sort of an act of love in its own weird, rash, Sherlock way?

"Christ," John puffed to himself. Why couldn't he think of these things _before_ he reacted? Sherlock wasn't anywhere near innocent of wrongdoing, of course, and there were very understandable triggers that John had with regards to his past, but that didn't magically make his reaction completely appropriate and beyond reproach. He couldn't afford to start displacing his frustration; that was Harry's gig, not John's.

When the next path into town came up, John turned and made his way back to the Pulliam house. He had some apologising to do.

* * *

So much exposition. We're getting to the fun stuff, though, I promise. Thanks to my buddy Mitch for beta reading! :)


	8. Chapter 8

More exposition!

* * *

Drake was home when John got back to the Pulliam house; she immediately chivvied him into a tiny washroom and directed him to a bucket of powdered soap and a wooden tub beneath a utilitarian tap before whisking away his sweaty clothing after he pulled the curtain shut. She returned with clean clothes, a reminder that dinner would be in three hours, a suggestion that he nap for a bit before dinner, and a warning to absolutely under no circumstances ever drink the water if he valued a functioning digestive system in any way, shape, or form. If the quality of the well water in Afghanistan was anything to judge by, John suspected he would do well to take her warning seriously. He'd treated enough cases of E. coli to know that he never wanted to contract it.

Despite the less-than-modern amenities, John emerged from the washroom feeling refreshed and more than ready for a nap (Drake had been spot-on with that suggestion). After a series of luxurious, drawn-out stretches, he happily flopped down on the unmade bed.

There was a squawk from the bed, a yelp from John, at least four flailing limbs, and then a sudden lurch as John found himself thrown from the bed. He was retaliating before conscious thought could catch up with his reflexes, wriggling out of a hold and grabbing the wrists of his assailant before attempting to reverse their positions. His opponent was wily enough to counter, which resulted in a chain of grapples and counter-grapples that went absolutely nowhere and all over the floor.

John's brain finally caught up with his instincts—the bed-ninja was tall, skinny, smelled like a chemistry set, and was cursing in French in a very distinct baritone. "Jesus bloody Christ, Sherlock, what the hell are you doing?!" he gasped, finally pinning the squirmy bastard facedown on the floor.

"You _jumped_ on me!" Sherlock spat back. "The last time that happened, it was an American hitman that was twice my mass trying to kill me in my sleep!" He sprang away and clambered to his feet when John let him out of the pin. "Obviously, I was defending myself from a perceived threat. Don't you _look_ before you throw yourself about?"

Sherlock was so wild-haired, wide-eyed, and puffed up with insulted, embarrassed dignity that John simply burst into peals of laughter right there on the floor. Glares and poorly-aimed kicks only made him laugh harder, so Sherlock threw himself back onto the bed and curled up in a ball, back to his near-hysterical flatmate.

When John had gathered enough control of himself, he got to his knees and shuffled over to the bed to giggle into the sheets. "You should see yourself, Sherlock. I can't stay mad at you when you're so ridiculous." Sherlock's dismissive sniff merely set off John's giggles again. "You're a regular moggy, you are, all bruised pride and haughty glares. Don't you change, Sherlock—there aren't words for how much I missed this."

John heard Sherlock's breath catch and stop; he fancied he could almost hear the detective's heart speed up with his surprise. "What?"

"You hate repetition; don't make me say it again."

Sherlock was terribly still for a tense, silent moment that seemed to stretch forever. "I don't understand." His voice was uncharacteristically quiet. "I say and do things that would be unforgivable to anyone else. I hurt you. Anger you. How can you miss any of that?" He curled up into a tighter ball. "I endanger you and cause you harm, directly and indirectly. I am technically the reason you have this disease. You tell me not to change. I don't understand; it isn't logical."

Well, that line of inquiry put a damper on John's mood, but one learned to expect such sudden subject changes from a flatmate who could probably maintain more than one train of thought. He reached out and simply rested one hand on the mattress next to the back of Sherlock's head. Inky curls brushed the backs of his fingertips. "Sometimes you're callous, yes, but more often, I think you're just blunt without meaning to be hurtful or cruel. It's... honest, I think, though sometimes you're completely honest and completely incorrect. I took it personally and overreacted today. You know that."

Sherlock had uncurled somewhat as John spoke. "Your entire life has been irreversibly changed because of my miscalculation of the risks, yet you remain here. Is there nothing I cannot do?"

Scoffing, John gave the back of Sherlock's head a nudge. "You didn't do this. Who could possibly predict being abducted by _contagious werewolves in Syria_, Sherlock? And yes, there are plenty of things you're not allowed to do, experimenting on me without my explicit consent being one of them." God, wasn't that a disaster waiting to happen? "I want full disclosure and early warnings, Sherlock Holmes, and not a thing less."

"Spoilsport," Sherlock remarked, turning over and propping himself up on his elbows. "In exchange for full disclosure and ample warning, I insist that you accompany me to a crime scene. Anderson has an irrational fear of dogs and an impressive falsetto range, if my source is to be trusted."

John rolled his eyes, but there was no resisting that wry, lopsided smile and the idea of the weaselly forensics 'expert' shrieking like a schoolgirl. "Just the once, and only if you promise that I won't get shot. Giant wolf-men aren't exactly everyday fare."

"We could always take you back to Baskerville. You do complain about the bills being difficult to pay."

"You are not making me a tourist attraction, Sherlock."

"Wolf-man has been done, it's true... ah! With Dr Stapleton's help, John, you could become a radio sensation, or a YouTube phenomenon! Film live and give out tickets to the recordings, like that aeroplane show you like on BBC4! Imagine it, John!" Sherlock raised one hand in the air, panning over an invisible marquee. "Captain Doctor John Hamish Watson, the Glowing Wolf-Man Bachelor Blogger! The idiot masses queuing up by the gross to hear your scintillating tales! The Queen herself in attendance! American filmmakers clamouring for your paw print on a blockbuster cinematic experience!"

If Sherlock's tone had been even one bit less deadpan, John might have wondered if the detective had gotten into the poppies while he'd been out. As it was, John settled for snatching one of the pillows and mashing it over the detective's idiot head. "Oh, shut up, you mad bastard, and give me the bed. I need a nap after a trip that bad."

* * *

_Shop fronts and street signs swept past as he pelted down the pavement, chasing the scent of almonds and chlorine through the heart of London. It didn't occur to him that the streets were strangely devoid of life, nor did he question the hot wind that was sending clouds of sand scudding over the tarmac and around the tyres of parked cars. He had to stay keen on the scent, lest his quarry slip away yet again—foul and slippery as an eel yet nestled like a spider in a web of informants and mercenaries, his prey would require utmost dedication to hunt and kill._

_ His prey was vain; John gave a great bark of laughter when he realised that his prey had holed up in the old pool building yet again. _

_ He was surprised when he plunged through the doors and found himself on the outskirts of a war-torn city, the hot desert air blasting through the doorway in a burst of sand and smoke. Soldiers in unfamiliar uniforms patrolled the streets alongside old Soviet tanks. John watched them pass from where he was crouched—every uniform, every weapon, every tank, and even the walls of the buildings had the same, mustard-yellow 'M' emblazoned in plain sight. _

_ John bristled. Wasn't that bastard dead? Surely that chapter of their lives was over and done with?_

_ A door was kicked out from one of the buildings; a squad of soldiers exited with several men bound and hooded between them. The men were knocked to their knees in the middle of the road, and the soldiers began to cackle and howl with ugly, crazed laughter. John watched in horror as their faces twisted into ever more grotesque shapes, until he wasn't sure whether they were human or something else. Fur rippled into existence over them; they tossed aside their weapons as their hands became long-fingered paws tipped in thick, sharp claws. A huge, black beast with a yellow sash leapt from the top of a tank to join the wolf-soldiers. Atash bared his teeth in a savage rictus of glee. "Let us show the Westerners what happens when they try to destroy our great nation!" he cried in a guttural, snarling voice. Huge white fangs glinted in the sunlight as his fellows broke into hungry, canine grins. "Their turncoat made us into weapons—let them see what their traitor has wrought of their enemies!"_

_ The hoods of the captives were torn away. John's heart leapt into his throat—Sherlock was there, dazed and covered in blood from a fresh head wound. (John!)_

_ Without a second thought, John bellowed his fury and burst out from his hiding place. Sherlock would never be caught up in Moriarty's machinations ever again, especially not while John (John!) was around to make sure of it. He plunged into the squadron of wolf-men with a snarl of (John! Wake up!) outrage, tearing at the first throat his teeth found, revelling in the hot, metallic-tasting, crimson spray that gushed between his teeth..._

"John Hamish Watson, wake up this instant!"

John came to with a start. He was surrounded, there were three of them, no, two, one of them was human and unarmed, not-threat, but the other two were powerful/not-pack/also-leaders and were next to his nest, he had to protect his back and...

... the human wrapped his arms around him. John's nose was flooded with the scents of pipe smoke and London and Home; when a long-fingered hand carefully took hold of his nape, he instinctively went limp. "John. John, think. You had a nightmare. It was a dream, just a dream. Deep breaths, John, deep breaths—it was only a dream." Sherlock's voice was deep and soothing, all of his sharp plosives and precise enunciations smoothed into a reassuring, rolling rumble.

As he slowly began to make sense of the overload of scent information, John recalled where he was and who the also-leaders... the Pulliams were. "Sodding hell," he whined, burying his face in Sherlock's shoulder even though the detective's embrace was clearly more of a restraint than an actual hug. Sherlock made a surprised noise but didn't move away; his hand left the back of John's neck just long enough to make some sort of motion before returning. John could hear soft footsteps and then the swish of the bedroom curtain being lifted aside. As their scents began to fade just a bit, John felt himself relaxing.

"Night terror," Sherlock said quietly. "I've observed your nightmares before; this one was different." John nodded, wondering when the hell Sherlock had ever watched him sleep. "Your other nightmares are loud but never so loud as this, nor are they loud in the same way; you whimper, shout orders, or cry out in denial, never in aggression or defiance. Was it Atash, then?"

John remembered the fangs and the hoods being whisked away and the blood running down Sherlock's face and the growling of the soldiers; he didn't realise he was also growling until Sherlock gently gripped the back of his neck again. The growl became a low, displeased grumble as the contact grounded John's emotions. "It was him. Him and Moriarty. It has to be. You're sure he's dead?"

"Absolutely certain," Sherlock confirmed. He looked thoughtful for a moment. "It is likely that this lycanthropy virus is artificial. I would not be shocked to find Moriarty's money behind the pilot or even the later stages of whatever project it was that produced this thing. Nevertheless, Jim Moriarty is quite dead and his organisation is in tatters. They will not be funding things for much longer, if they're still funding anything at all." He let go of John's nape and took a moment to give him a cursory looking-over. "You relaxed considerably once the Pulliams left the room. Why?"

John ducked his head and glanced toward the door-curtain, hoping that neither of the Pulliams had picked up on his tension. He didn't want to offend them and risk losing access to everything they knew about the lycanthropy disease. "Hush, Sherlock. They don't need to know that!" he hissed. "They... they smell _different_, all right? That's all."

Sherlock's raised eyebrow was more eloquent than any speech in saying, 'And?'

"How do I describe a smell I've never smelled before, Sherlock? They smell different. They smell like... like not-humans, I suppose, and control, and paying attention, and it _bothers_ me because if we were in London, I feel like _I_ would be the one in charge, but we're not, and except for you, nothing here is _mine_ or _home_. It makes me nervous."

Drake chose that moment to return with a plate covered in tin foil. "Well, of course it does. You're an alpha—a lucid one, of course, but you're hardwired to be in charge." She set the plate down on John's lap and removed the foil before handing him a fork and spoon. "Don't look so surprised. Al and I picked up on it this morning, before I left for the classroom. Your scent changed overnight." She threw herself down in one of the overstuffed chairs that sat against the other wall and kicked her feet up on an ottoman. "I'm surprised you actually listened to Al today. Until we were properly mated and bonded, he and I butted heads constantly."

John was completely torn between tearing into the heaping plate of dinner and listening to what Drake had to say. "So... how did I get to be an alpha?" Maybe that was a stupid question—he _was_ a captain, after all, and was accustomed to bossing around thirty to one hundred tense, rambunctious men in a warzone—but a virus could hardly retroactively account for past command experience. "Does it get passed along, like the lucidity?"

Drake could only shrug. "Hell if I know." She started ticking names off on her fingers. "Atash is an alpha and you're an alpha, I'm an alpha and Alasdair is an alpha, but the guy that turned Atash and I was a beta. The previous alpha here in Sadad turned four people; his wife ended up an alpha, his sister presented as a beta, and his two nephews ended up gammas. We honestly can't tell where the pattern is, if there is one." Drake pointed at the plate between John and Sherlock. "Eat, you. You'll be feeling the hyperactivity soon, and you'll want the fuel."

Truth be told, John suspected he was already feeling it. He couldn't seem to find a comfortable position for his legs, and if he stopped moving, he felt a bit like he might burst. He took Mrs Pulliam's advice and set to work on dinner.

After a minute or two of relative silence (John was a fastidious eater, even when ravenous), Sherlock spoke up. "Tell me about the change."

Drake shrugged. "What about it?"

"Everything, obviously."

That got a raised eyebrow. "You'll get more with manners, but I suspect it's a moot point with you," sighed Drake as she sat forward and rested her elbows on her knees. "The change doesn't hurt, surprisingly. It feels somewhat like pressing and popping a joint, and it's over within five to ten minutes. Al doesn't gain any height when he's Changed, but I gain about three inches." She patted her thighs. "I don't binge after—I've got enough fat by the time it comes around that I don't need to supplement. Al eats like a horse, though, so we keep fatty meat salted and packed in the cellar."

Sherlock looked at John, who narrowed his eyes. "I wasn't implying anything, John. You are fit. You will simply need to procure food." This earned a deadpan look and a raised eyebrow. Sherlock rolled his eyes and hid a smile. John was adapting well to everything, better than Sherlock had expected. Seeing humour from him was always a good sign.

"You're welcome to ours," Drake offered. "Al and I aren't due for our changes until next week. Plenty of time for us to get more."

"Is next week the full moon?" John asked between mouthfuls.

Drake snorted and kicked back in her chair again. "Funny you should ask. It is the full moon next week, but that's got nothing to do with the change. My cycle just happens to be a twenty-eight day one; when Al and I bonded, his cycle lined up with mine. Most people have longer cycles, generally between thirty and forty days."

John groaned and buried his face in one palm. "You've got to be kidding me. We just happened to be out here at the right time of month to get attacked by a marauding pack of werewolves?" He looked up at Sherlock, who shrugged. "Sometimes I think I have the worst luck when it comes to the Middle East..."

"You're the one who invaded Afghanistan," Sherlock supplied not-very-helpfully.

The conversation drifted to other topics once it was evident that Drake had little left to really explain about the change. Sherlock was taciturn, as usual, but he still soaked up everything Drake could tell them about Syria and the ongoing civil war to the north. He had been in Damascus back in 2011, just briefly, but the man he had been tracking had avoided the chaotic parts of town. Apparently things had escalated considerably; Drake was speaking worriedly of occupations, missile strikes, and air raids.

He sincerely hoped they would be able to avoid getting tangled in any of the fighting. Statistically speaking, civil wars were second only to sectarian conflicts when it came to wanton bloodshed. Syria appeared to be embroiled in a storm that combined the worst elements of both.

* * *

And so we start to get to the fun bits.

PSA: Though I've set a story amongst the Syrian conflict, I by no means wish to make light of a truly horrific situation. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been displaced by an increasingly violent, vicious war, and Syria isn't even the only country dealing with a major conflict right now. Outside of war, there are tens of thousands of others around the world who need the help of aid groups like UNHCR, the Red Cross/Crescent, and Medicins Sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders to achieve stability and survival- Storm Sandy victims, for instance, who are *still* without power going into the most frigid months of winter, those displaced by the brushfires currently raging in Australia, people in Japan still rebuilding from the Tohoku quake and tsunami, and the Haitians, whose government's reconstruction efforts have yet to bear fruit. Even a few cans of nonperishable food, a case of bottled water, or a few blankets can make a whole world of difference for someone somewhere (and that somewhere could be right in your hometown!). Regardless of your age or station in life, you *can* do something to help. All it takes is a bit of proactivity.


End file.
